


The Slime Pit and the Sorceress

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Genre: Autistic Entrapta, Based Scorpia, Blood Drinking, Blood and Violence, Bold 100 point comic sans SLIME, Chapter three gets REEEEEAL dark, Cycle of Abuse, Did I mention slime?, Dubcon Masturbation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Everybody flirts with everybody else don't blame me I just write this, Everybody's 18+ now, Eye Trauma, F/F, Gen, Intrusive Thoughts, Masturbation, Mind Control, Mostly offscreen - Freeform, Nightmares, Poor gullible Entrapta, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slime, Still hopefully not as dark as the premise could be, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Trans Perfuma, Warnings May Change, Weird anatomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-08-25 22:53:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16669930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Entrapta makes an interesting discovery about some minor Horde tech.  Shadow Weaver, disgraced, stripped of most of her power, and suffering as Catra's servant, takes advantage of her find.  Her first step: getting Entrapta's perfect loyalty.  Her ultimate goal: vengeance on Catra...





	1. (I Want You) Tarred and Feathered

_These are the: tools of my trade_

_I want you: tarred and feathered_

\--Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, "[Tarred and Feathered](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7O8YHunKmk)" [warning for extreme lyrical violence]

* * *

 

It was a very special night in the abode of Catra and her allies. Catra was here; Scorpia was here. They were seated at the special table on its elevated platform in what Scorpia unfortunately kept calling the rumpus room. There was a problem: an absent player.

"Underling," Catra said, glancing down from the platform, "go check on Entrapta for me."

Shadow Weaver seethed. "As you wish, Catra."

Catra snapped her fingers. "Say the whole thing, bitch."

"The whims of Catra, magickat of all magickats, unlimited in scope and power, are more important to me than the beating of my heart, for Catra is second only to Hordak, master of Etheria, and he himself is second only to almighty Horde Prime. Long live Catra, hair soaked in blood, belly filled with conquest."

Catra spit on her. The blot of spit arced through the air and splashed onto her mask, trickling down to her chin. It was like acid on her old scars. Her chin trembled with rage or despair.

"You took too long. Get going or the next thing I hit you with is a brick."

"As you wish," Shadow Weaver said, turning and slinking away. On her feet.

"You better believe I wish it," Catra said, sighing in relief. Sixteen years of pain, where every infraction carried the faint but ever-present threat of being murdered, and now the glove was on the other hand. It never failed to cheer her up, seeing that rotten bitch stumble around on feet she'd forgotten how to work, back bowed, hair hanging limp like a moldy curtain.

"You done giving her a hard time?" Scorpia said.

"Well, she's out of earshot," Catra said, and indeed she just barely was, the door swinging shut behind her. "So yeah, I'm done. Not with this hand, though." She looked her cards over. "Hit me."

A dealer bot spat a face-down card. She flipped it over: a 9. She looked at her eight and seven and did some quick math. "...shit!"

"Dude," Scorpia said, "you gotta learn to count 'em." She reached a massive claw across the table and scooped Catra's bet (three Chewy ration bars) over to her pile of treasures (ration bars, scented soap, bottles of discretely-brewed beer, contraband pastries). The felt table was already scratched to the underlying wood in the arc of her reach from her seat.

"Fuck you," Catra said, without malice. "You know me and math are mortal enemies."

"I'm sure the Trapmaster can teach you!" Scorpia said.

"The..." Catra considered her next words and gambled it all: "Alright, first of all... Do you know what a 'trap' is, in, uh, slang?"

"Yeah, man," Scorpia said. She shouted into the air, "Princess Scorpia radio code phrase: IMPERFECT MEMORIA. Play: [Scorpia's Bitchin' Trap Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuxyIZEGGbk)."

Hidden speakers piped to life and a song played that completely destroyed Catra's sense of reality.

* * *

Castigation.

Humiliation.

Deprivation.

Shadow Weaver's life was long and full of agonies undreamed-of, but this latest despair had been too hideous to withstand. "Latest" was relative; it had been two long and hideous years since the changeover and the world had settled into this hideous new status quo, bereft of the only thing that made life worth living and ensorcelled to continue living against her wishes.  
Shadow Weaver trudged through the long darkness of Catra's abode in the Fright Zone. What had once been her tower of occult wisdom was now a playpen for an acid-tongued wastrel, her cream-puff bodyguard, and a feebleminded tinkerer.

Speaking of the feebleminded tinkerer.

She reached her laboratory at last; it was impossible to miss given the many paintings of robots, deformed toy-breed dogs, and herself on the walls leading to her door. She took a bracing breath and opened the door.

Inside were piles of experimental machinery, rows of benches to work on said machinery, discarded tools, barrels of green alchemical substance storage barrels. The horrible pink-haired one wasn't inside. Not visibly--

"CATCH!" said the horrible pink-haired one, swinging into sight from some hiding place in the ceiling. She flung something directly at Shadow Weaver.

Weaver dodged to the side, but in the wrong direction; a glob of green filth splattered against her shoulder. She stood in the open door waiting for the stuff to... act. Would it eat through her arm or just poison her through her skin?

...nothing. The sticky stuff just dribbled slowly down.

"Oooh, I gotcha!" Entrapta said, swinging to the ground on her massive ponytails. "Isn't that stuff just awful? It's sticky, it smells weird, it's got it all!"

"What are you doing," Shadow Weaver said, deigning to touch the stuff. It was, as advertised, filthy-feeling. She pulled it from her clothes and threw it to the floor, stepping over it delicately.

"Well, basically," Entrapta said, moving onto one of the work benches, "what happened was I found a bunch of this stuff in like a storage closet? And I checked it for radiation and heavy metals and it was all 'nah, we good' so I was like 'what's it do?' And I been lookin' at it and testing it and all that good stuff."

"I could have told you what it was if you asked," Shadow Weaver said. The door automatically shut tight. She looked around at Entrapta's room, trying to see if Imp were here somewhere, the conniving little bastard.

"I mean, I _kno-o-o-ow_ it's like... poison delivery stuff?" She popped open a canister with her hands and pulled out a handful of the stuff. It didn't quite come free, staying attached to the mass by long strands of ooze. "But here's the thing. Hordak used this stuff to poison Perfuma's forest, yeah? And, like, for deterraforming in general? But he's missed something and I think that's really neat."

"Missed what?" Shadow Weaver said.

"This stuff, it's not just physically sticky. It's, get this, _energetically_ sticky!" She stretched the slime into a thin film, holding it in front of her face like a dripping veil. "If you used this to make, like, a potion, or a salve, or whatever, then as long as it's on whatever it's covering, it's gonna keep re-casting the spell 'til it works. So if you have a strong spell that can get thrown off real easy, boom! Or a weak spell that you can make stronger by casting it a bunch, boom! Or if it's both strong and, uh, you know, that thing that I just said!"

Weaver narrowed her eyes.

"So I've been thinkin' of, you know, app-li-ca-tions." She threw the slime back into the container. "You have any ideas?"

"I might," she said.

"Not that you can do magic or nothing, but..."

"It so happens I can."

Entrapta raised an eyebrow. "Really? 'Cause that time Catra locked you in a trunk I thought you'da used magic to get outta there if you could."

Shadow Weaver groaned. "My powers are vastly diminished separated from the Black Garnet. But there are sorceries I can perform even without its energies. Slow spells... weak spells... but spells which may be of use to you."

"Liiiiiike?" Entrapta said, sitting cross-legged in midair as her ponytails held her closer to Shadow Weaver.

"What do you know of sorcery, girl?"

"Not a bunch, I'm kinda mainly a techy kind of girl. All that magic stuff, whoosh!" She waved her hand over her head.

"There are spells to enhance cognition, agility, strength... I can cast these and more. I will need only time, this filth--" She gestured vaguely at the slime barrels. "--and a willing test subject."

"Ooooh. I've never had enhanced cognition before..." Entrapta said, imagining all the sorts of things that Shadow Weaver could enhance. "Say, uh, weird hypothetical question. Can you improve, like... s... social stuff?"

"Charisma," Shadow Weaver said, leaning in to whisper to Entrapta's ear. "I see how confused you become the longer you have to speak to others. How little time Catra gives you for your brilliant theories. If you only had the right words... if you could only see what body language means, hear the subtext that has so long evaded you."

Entrapta nodded along. "Yeah... I could use... help... in that... department." She sighed. "Can you keep this a secret, Weeve?"

"Weaver," Shadow Weaver hissed, "if you must abbreviate my name."

"Well, can you?"

"I can. If you can."

"Why would I... I mean... yeah, totally. I got this. Yeah, I want in. I want in super hard and super fast. How much goop are you gonna need? ... Tons?"

"Yes. 'Tons.'" She whispered into her other ear: "I will tell you if I need anything else in my quest to help you. When I'm done... you'll put in a kind word for me, won't you? For Catra."

"Sure, I mean, obviously," Entrapta said. "And..."

She glomped onto Shadow Weaver. Weaver perished inwardly as the awful pink one squeezed the breath out of her.

"Th-thanks, alright? 'Cause I'm not really good at this and I could use the help but if I asked Catra she'd just cut me all the way up..."

"Of course," Shadow Weaver said, adopting what she thought of as the Mothervoice. She never bothered to use the Mothervoice on Catra. Adora had learned to distrust the Mothervoice. She doubted the awful pink one would learn in time what the Mothervoice was made to do. "Where would I be without you?"

Entrapta laughed nervously. "Oh, let's not think about that. Let's just let me think about... stuff. ... Do you need like a wheelbarrow or something?"

"Just send one down to my dwelling. I'll keep in touch."

* * *

Entrapta swung into the room. "Heeeey guys! I brought drinks!" She waggled a six pack of Horde soft drinks labeled CARBONATED LEMON-LIME PHOSPHATE.

"Good," Catra grumbled, "I need more shit to gamble." Her chair was tilted on its back legs; she stood with her knees to her chest, toes balanced on the edge.

"'Ey, Trappy!" Scorpia said.

"We--we had this discussion!" Catra said.

"We did, yes," Scorpia said.

Entrapta picked up a beanbag chair thrown in the corner and flung it at the elevated Gamblin' Platform with her hair. "We still doin' blackjack with my amazing robo-shoe or are we headin' into the meat of the evenin', ladies?"

"Hell yeah we are!" Scorpia said, scooping up the cards and snipping them all in half as she tried to shuffle them. "And it's time to break open a new pack!"

"Robo-shoe!" Entrapta said, flipping her mask on, "Deal us in some poker!"

"DISPENSERATING... THAYMOR... HOLD THEM... POKER," the robo-shoe said, loading a fresh deck and spitting out hands and river cards.

"You've watched us play poker like five months now," Scorpia said, "think you're finally ready to play?"

"Gonna be honest," Catra said, cracking open her bottle of Carbonated Lemon-Lime Phosphate, "I was getting really tired of playing pinochle, so I hope you're not gonna chicken out."

"Oh, no, not me!" Entrapta said, all smiles. "I read up on the hand strengths and odds so I'm pretty sure I know exactly what I'm doing."

Slowly, but surely, with the inevitable shamble of the walkin' dead, Catra drained her of all her tiny foods and extra soda.

"Awwwwwwwww!" Entrapta said, melting into her beanbag chair. "How is it that I keep losing even when I have better cards?"

Catra smirked and peeled open a Ration Bar (Chewy) won from her. "This game isn't about the cards, really. You can win any round with any hand. It's all in the other guy's head." She tapped her temple. "Also, you smiled every time you had a strong hand and frowned when you didn't, so... yeah."

"But I was doing well!" Entrapta said. "I thought you'd be intimidated."

"Wel-l-l-l-l... we were!" Scorpia said, holding up her mangled pair of hole cards. "But we were intimidated into, uh, what's the phrase... not betting."

Entrapta crossed her arms and lay her head on the table. "This sucks."

"You just need a little practice," Catra said, tearing off a bit of the Chewy (peanut butter, rolled oats, toasted coconut) and rolling it into a little ball. She pressed little divots into it. "Want a... whatever this is?" she said, holding it out.

Entrapta plucked it up with her hair. "Thanks," she said, popping it into her mouth. "Yeah... I guess... I just need... more... social... stuff."

"You're getting better at it!" Scorpia said, patting her on the back with her giant crushing claws.

"Yeah... I guess." She thought about Shadow Weaver's offer.

* * *

Shadow Weaver's abode was an unfurnished spare room that stunk of cleaning chemicals. Its sole furnishing was a bare light bulb smoldering in the wall; its sole adornment were wards against the eye carved into the walls and ceiling with her own fingernails over long paranoid nights of certainty that Hordak was judging her demeanor in her diminished state and would at any time proclaim her too pathetic to allow existing.

She sat in the corner beneath the first ward she'd carved, waiting for anything. Eventually, there was a knock at the door. It slid open--there was a lock, but for her own sake she seldom used it for fear of reprisal--and one of Entrapta's reprogrammed Horde drones attempted to step in. It was too wide to fit through the door, so after attempting to bash its way through the frame, it simply rotated and slid a drum inside. It waved goodbye and the door shut.

Shadow Weaver seized the barrel and shoved it into the corner, the scrape of metal against metal sweet torture on her sensitive ears. She pried the lid off; the slime's distinctive chemical aroma displaced the bleach-stink.

There was an old spell she had in mind. In Mystacor, Another's Eyes was taught as a tool of empathy, a means to share the world as you saw it with another. Her first demerit was when she devised a way of imbuing the spell into a potion, slipping it into the tea at lunchtime, and swinging a class debate dramatically in her favor.

The demerit was, in Castaspella's words, for the perversion of a spell of empathy into a spell of mind control.

Mind control... of course not. It was nothing so trite a trick as that. It was better, even: control necessitated focus and direction that functionally removed the caster from action. Another's Eyes just took a little tinkering to make it so much more useful: a spell to make one realize the inherent correctness of Light Spinner, It let them see the world as she did: a place to be manipulated, reformed, and controlled for the betterment of Light Spinner, Shadow Weaver.

It took time and effort to imbue a little honey with a short-lived spell. It would take a lot of time and effort to ensorcell a vat of filth like this. But all she had was time.

* * *

Some time passed.

* * *

The door opened on Catra and company's suite, billowing clouds of ash announcing their arrival. Catra limped through, coughing. "Oh, fuck me, where did they get that much fire from?"

"And why did we fly _into_ the fire?" Scorpia said. "I wasn't clear about that!"

"Hey, I was at the helm of the--" Catra said.

"Hi guys bye guys" Entrapta said, rushing past them through the cloud of ash. "Have a nice shower!"

"The hell?" Catra said. "Where are you going? It's game night!"

"Oh--right!" Entrapta held herself aloft on the guard rail rather than continue flinging herself over. "Ahem: I've got a big invention and it just got finished and I'll be open later. Maybe. Or tomorrow. Probably. Bye!" She dropped and let gravity do the hard work.

"Huh," Scorpia said as the door closed. "Think she's made something to have sex with?"

"Like she doesn't have sex with everything in her damn lab already?" Catra said. "Gods, somebody teach her to just--wait. Right. Other peoples' spines don't do that, nevermind. ... Well, she's got hands that aren't covered in calluses and _tipped in skin-ripping talons_!" She extended her claws for emphasis.

"Ah, that ol' dance," Scorpia said, holding up her claws. "I ever tell you about serket dildos, man?"

"Please don't," Catra said, marching towards the shower.

"It gets _real weird_ 'cause of how serket dicks work!" Scorpia said, following at a short distance.

"I said don't!" Catra said.

"Alright, next time," Scorpia said, and then whistled.

Catra, for no reason at all, thought of Adora, and how strong and soft her hands were. In contrast to how practiced and deadly Catra's own were, of course. She didn't feel anything like a wistful pang of loss accompanied by a burning need in her nethers. That's not what she was put here on Etheria to feel.

"...Screw it," Catra said. "What's the weird thing about serket dicks?"

* * *

Entrapta opened the door to her laboratory. Shadow Weaver was waiting for her, seated by her invention.

"Hi!" Entrapta said, waving. She glided over the mess piled up between the door and her creation. (Hindsight. Whatever.)

"This is... quite the creation," Weaver said, touching the base of the device. "It looks quite simple."

"It is!" Entrapta said, walking around it. "See, this here's the base..." She touched the base, a shallow divot in a basin with a drain at the bottom, with her ponytail. "It catches the stuff you're gonna pour all over me and pumps it back up through he-e-e-ere..." She dragged her ponytail up a plain free-standing wall attached to the base, a visible pipe running up it. "To here!" She pointed at a broad showerhead with many square openings. "And of course the slime goes in there." She indicated a heavy green tub on top of the showerhead; the pipe led into it. "That would explain these babies, of course!" She pointed at the support struts keeping the tub from falling and crushing whoever stood in the pit.

"And... these?" Shadow Weaver pointed at a quartet of clamps tucked into the basin at either side.

"Oh, I was honest with myself and figured if I was taking a shower in slime I wold probably, uh, freak the hell out at some point, so that keeps me there!" She almost entered the machine, but held up. "Wait, should I be naked for this?"

Shadow Weaver suppressed a shudder. "Pardon?"

"If I'm gonna get muck dumped all over me, one, let's be honest wow golly _fuck_ it's gonna be hard to get out of my hair--how much of it is gonna go onto my hair? Are Lefty and Righty safe?" She pointed at her ponytails with her underutilized arms.

"The more coverage the better. Clothing would retain slime and keep it pressed against your skin. Then again, direct contact with your skin may also be useful."

"I kno-o-ow, but I was... aw, hell, will this fix... this problem? The don't-knows?"

"It very well might," Shadow Weaver said. She crossed her arms. "Make your decision, child."

"...right. N-n-n-n-naked it is." She pulled her gloves off while one ponytail unlaced and yanked off her boots. Shadow Weaver looked away while Entrapta unbuttoned her tube top and rubbery butt armor that she didn't know what it was called but she liked the effect (and it was pretty neat when Catra saved her by grabbing it that one time, huh?).

The Jim Co. jeans were next, then her kitten-print boxer shorts, and last but not least her strapless bra that she wore purely to achieve the correct skin-to-clothes ratio with her detached sleeves, since it didn't do a great job of supporting Hoppy and Bouncy.

"Alright, naked!" she said, fists on her hips. "...right, except for the... whatever." The sleeves breathed pretty good. And they covered her hands. Her hands needed the protection.

"Are you quite done?" Shadow Weaver said.

"You better believe it! Oh, right, socks." She peeled her socks off with her toes and threw them aside. "There we go. Alright... I am now entering... the Slime Pit." She took a long ponytail-step, straddling the basin with her hair while her body dangled beneath the broad showerhead. The clamps deployed, two locking onto her sides, two more onto her upper legs near where they met her thigh. "Okay... I am... socketed in. Do your worst, Weaver!"

Shadow Weaver spoke to one of Entrapta's many pet robots. "Fill the machine."

The spidery robot climbed up the side of the pit, the sturdy construction hardly making a squeak under its weight; it carried the slime barrel over its orb-shaped body. It cracked the lid off and dumped the contents into the basin. The sloshing of the thick stuff overhead put a modest fear into Entrapta.

"Yep..." she said. "Nice, solid construction... no breakage here..."

"I trust," Shadow Weaver said. "How does it begin the... process?"

"Pull that lever," Entrapta said, pointing with a ponytail at a heavy knife switch bolted onto the wall. "That's, ah, yeah, just in case I get skittish."

"Of course," Weaver said, slouching over to it. She placed a hand on the switch, wrapping her long, gray fingers around the smooth metal. "Ahh... yes. Fine construction. This will feel good. Are you ready?"

"Nope!" Entrapta said, snapping on her goggles. "Do it anyway!"

Shadow Weaver made a little sound as she threw the switch. A soft thunk sounded inside the machine. For a long minute, nothing happened. Shadow Weaver prowled around the Slime Pit and Entrapta fidgeted in the grapples' grasp.

"This is a machine for testing patience, I see," Weaver said.

"It's--well, it's a prototype!" Entrapta said. "Maybe it needs more airholes to encourage the gunk to flow. Ha ha, hindsight, just..."

The slime gurgled, and dribbles of ooze poured from the many holes of the shower. "...Ah... here it goes..." Entrapta said, giggling nervously. The streams of ooze draped onto her head; she shuddered as the bright green stuff pooled over her head and began to flow downward, some behind her, the rest sliding down her forehead and the sides of her face.

Shadow Weaver watched with some fascination as the slime flowed more readily, more dripping and flowing from the showerhead and raining onto Entrapta, touching on her shoulders, her plump breasts, tickling the pudge of her belly. The slime stuck where it landed and swept down her body.

Entrapta stretched out her ponytails trying to keep them free of the slime flow. The braces bore her weight for her.

The first drops of slime reached her toes--painted by Scorpia, very carefully--and from there splashed into the basin.

Entrapta's mouth was clamped shut, lips pursed to keep her lips safe from the feeling of the slime. She tried to imagine the cold, clammy stuff as being something else--like pancake batter, maybe, or too much shampoo--and it wasn't helping. She felt weird. She felt really, disgustingly weird. Her brain felt swaddled in cotton... not like cotton sheets or a cotton-stuffed pillow, but like it was in a jar waiting research.

She looked down, spat gunk from her mouth, and said, "Hey, uh, is it done yet?"

"No," Shadow Weaver said. "Not until you are covered from head to toe. Remember? The more you wear, the more it will affect you."

"It's taking so damn long and it feels so damn gross do we have to Weaver? Do we have to?!"

"You want to look your friends in the eye as an equal, don't you? Able to speak with them, speak like them? You can take a little discomfort. Take your medicine, child."

"Don't call me a..." She looked up at Shadow Weaver, and through the haze of green washing over her goggles she saw that her hands were moving. "Are you casting something?"

"I may be," Shadow Weaver said. "Perhaps you would like this to speed up."

"I'd... maybe?" she said, and a little slime dribbled into her mouth. She spit the stuff out--it tasted like it smelled and it smelled like stuff she shouldn't eat.

"Then I grant your wish." She murmured an invocation and with a sharp series of rattles and pops the grate overhead splintered open and the slime, no longer strangled, began to pour over her in a single dense column.

"Wait--" Entrapta said, and the bulk of slime pressed against her head. It was heavy and cold and it swept her thoughts out of her head like a broom sweeping dust out the door. She screamed in terror. "What--what the hell is this?! What are you doing to me-- _mmmph_!" The ooze washed over her face, filling her mouth. She thrashed against the restraints, her ponytails struggling to tear them open, reach the failsafes she had so very far away.

Shadow Weaver watched Entrapta batten the clamps, kick and pull and scream through the wash of mucous coating her. She was no longer merely striped with slime; it overwhelmed her body, racing down her belly and hips and legs. Her arms dripped with lashes of ooze; her ponytails gradually lost strength as they succumbed to the weight of the stuff seeping into them.

Entrapta's screams trailed off into gurgles, then into heaving sighs. (Shadow Weaver idly recalled that the slime could be breathed through; Hordak would be terribly disappointed if someone sprayed with poison died of drowning instead.) She fell limp in the clamps. The drain in the basin choked on slime and the basin soon filled, slime sloshing over the sides and dribbling across the floor.

Shadow Weaver estimated that this, at last, had been enough, and stepped away to flip the switch to off.

The slime chugged to a stop. The clamps lowered Entrapta to the basin; she slumped into the basin, resting her upper body against the wall, leaving a long smear of green against it. She was breathing steadily.

Shadow Weaver wondered what was going on in that fractured little mind of hers. Something good--something better than what was thumping around in there before. She waited to see what would happen.

She had nothing but time, after all.

Entrapta's ponytail moved first, her right ponytail; it felt around for purchase, finding one. Then her left. In tandem, they pulled Entrapta from the muck. A long skirt of ooze came with her as she crawled out of the Slime Pit.

A light guttered under the slime. Two...

She righted her lolling head and pried off her goggles, dropping them to the floor. Her irises were blazing with crimson light.

She giggled; she laughed. She wiped slime from her mouth, not especially cleanly, and cackled maniacally, throwing her whole body into the act, not caring how much slime was leaking into her mouth. "Haaaa haah haha... Ohh, man. Ohh, baby... Shadow Weaver, that was... that was a me-a-a-a-n trick you pulled..." She flashed an enormous, toothy grin stained with streaks of green. "I've been _slimed_."

"This much is evident, you jabbering, half-wit idiot savant," Shadow Weaver said. "You moron. You _sugar-swilling pig_."

"You have such a way with _words_ , Shadow Weaver," Entrapta said. Her ponytails sagged; she weaved drunkenly, slopping across the floor. She was raining slime. "You know just what to say to a lady to perk her up. You're... you're just... you're neat."

"Just 'neat?'"

"You're... ha, right! Sorry, m'am, I mean, you're the One True God. You're the Way and the Path. All other gods are, like, uh, what's the word..." She rubbed her chin. "You make them look like pussies. That's a word! Phrase! Whatever. Whatever!" She twirled around, or tried to; she was soon tangled up in her hair and landed on her ass in a puddle on the floor. "Haa, I tripped."

"That would be the immediate effect of the Slime Pit, it seems..." Shadow Weaver said, keeping well clear of Entrapta as she writhed on the ground. "Intense disorientation. We'll have to see if it fades. ... Of course, with an empty-headed beast such as you, it may be difficult to discern."

Oh, that felt good to say. It felt right. This was where she belonged. This is what she was meant to be.

"Great and mighty Shadow Weaver," Entrapta said from the floor, "I, uh... I got two things. I can feel the great things you want me to get workin' on but it's not, like, super clear? Number one, what is that? The thing you want me to do."

"I want you to assist me in taking my revenge on Catra," Shadow Weaver said. "That duplicitous little bitch is long overdue for punishment, and the Black Garnet must ache and pine for my command. You will help facilitate the revenge I cannot take on my own."

"Oh, cool, sure!" Entrapta rubbed her slimy legs together like a cricket. "So, uh. Two. Can I masturbate~? I know it's ru-u-u-u-u-ude to do it in front of someone but I just... I just gotta. I'm so _owned_. It's like you have my soul on a chain and it feels _good_."

"If you wish," Shadow Weaver said, with a sigh.

She did wish.

Shadow Weaver watched, not out of any prurient interest, but just to observe her behavior. She would have to take notes.

She wondered if Catra would be similarly hopeless after her bath. If so... there were so many things she could make her do.

So many delicious, awful things.

"First..." Shadow Weaver said to herself, for Entrapta was too lost in the ecstasy of her own busy hands. "We will need more slime."

* * *

_Should I cut and clout_

_Or should I drown_

_Drown in slime?_

\--Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, "Tarred and Feathered"

 


	2. What You're Told

_Time's up_

_Close your eyes_

\--"[BBB](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y27mjl7iI1I)," How to Destroy Angels

* * *

 

Tragically, Scorpia awoke first today, and Catra awoke to the sound of lo-fi hip hop beats. She lifted her head off the thin bunk mattress and followed her ears to the source. Scorpia was warming up, her music coming from her accursed decades-old ghetto blaster.

(The name had different connotations on Etheria than in other places; sonic suppression weapons were frequently deployed in the Fright Zone, especially in the overcrowded civilian worker dwellings.)

"Why... why are you still using that?" Catra said. "You can make the walls play music when you ask them."

"I like the sound quality!" Scorpia said.

"It's _audibly_ falling apart."

"It's an aesthetic!"

"Aesthetics are visual, jackass," Catra said, hoping she was correct about that.

"Whatever!" Scorpia said happily. "Wanna get your calisthenics in, Catty?"

"I can barely get my ability to live in, Scorpia. Let me sleep in a little bit, you weren't the one almost bisected by a falling tree."

"If you insist," Scorpia said. "I'll be playing some lo-fi hip-hop beats to focus up on. Ooh, here comes the drop!"

The drop--a drum line at all--hit, and Scorpia began her exercises in earnest.

"Did you see Entrapta last night, after she left I mean?" Catra said. "I was dead the second my head touched the bunk."

"Nope, can't say I did," Scorpia said, performing squats. "I waited for her all dang night, too! Or at least like an hour after you went to bed. Then I just had a nice hot cup of peppermint tea and went to bed."

"Hrrrmph. She better not have wandered off and got bitten by something..."

The door burst open. It didn't even open that way; Entrapta just threw her entire bulk into it and knocked it out from the gliding mechanism. Tiny repair arms struggled to pull the door back in place while the princess stood tall on her ponytails. "Hi-i-i, guys," she said.

"Entrapta, you... look like crap," Scorpia said. "You lose a fight to a paint can?"

Entrapta's hair was soaking wet and green, leaving damp goop-prints where she walked. Her skin was stained green too; she was so soaked through and so braless she might as well have gone topless. Her jeans sagged. She'd forgotten one shoe. And she had a new pair of heavily-tinted goggles.

Catra padded off the bed and around Entrapta, inspecting her for damage. "I thought I needed a shower yesterday," she said, "but you definitely need one now."

"Eeeehh, I'm good," Entrapta said, with a dismissive gesture. "I showered last night... twice! Ehehehehehehheheheh." She gave Catra a playful nudge on the cheek with one of her ponytails.

Catra nearly slipped to her belly, catching herself at the last moment. "Bas _tet_ , what the..." She rubbed the thin green goop Entrapta left behind with the back of her glove. "Seriously, what the hell did you fall in last night? Cough syrup?" She scraped the fluid off on the floor.

"Fall into? I don't know what _oooh_ yeah, right! It totally slipped my mind." Entrapta pouted. "I'm working on an awesome new buff... cream... for melee fighting. And it's also a combination shampoo and body wash! One that's good for volume and strength because none of the combo washes I've found are and oh boy do I need hair volume and strength." She stroked a ponytail. "Iddn't that right, Lefty... yes it is, yes it is..."

"All-in-one body wash that helps with hair volume and strength, huh..." Scorpia said, not having moved an inch from her exercise pad. At present she was contorted like a factory-reject pretzel. "If that stuff works I'll have a reason to grow my hair out again!"

"I'll keep you posted!" Entrapta said. "Spoiler, I think it's turning out just fine. Now if you'll excuse me I just remembered I forgot something. See you later!" She barreled back through the door, which had almost finished repairing itself.

Catra sighed. "I'm gonna call Shadow Weaver so she can clean this stuff up. And maybe I'll insinuate her mom was a slut."

"That's one too far, Catty," Scorpia said, tutting her. "Being a slut is a fun life choice. You should imply her mom--"

* * *

Entrapta passed Shadow Weaver in the hall. "So I touched Catra and the slime got on her and she went all--" She imitated Catra's dip and wearied expression.

"That's--" Shadow Weaver contemplated. "I didn't cast anything like that. Is the slime drawing energy from others to continue its enchantment? Is it some... random effect, a result of unnecessary magic energy expending itself?"

"I'unno!" Entrapta said, shrugging shoulders and hair.

"This will merit further study, then. By all means--strike down as many as you can and see what happens. Let them come to feel terror at the sight of your countenance."

"Terror!" Entrapta giggled. "And here I was gettin' contact high from 'annoyance.'"

Shadow Weaver's beeper went off. She checked the message. "...eghhh. Back to toiling in that bitch's name once more."

"It won't be long, Shadow Weaver!" Entrapta said, speeding off; she really did forget she had something to do. "Good luck!"

"I'll hardly need it," Weaver muttered.

Her mind raced with purpose and clarity. In particular, she needed to decide who would be next to feel the slime on their back.

* * *

The requisitions office was a stark, gray place, aggressively normal--at least as far as Entrapta considered "normal." It lacked the organic lines and general intense spookiness the Fright Zone radiated--

Ohh, was that why they called it the Fright Zone? Makes sense.

Anyway!

"So-o-o-o-o," Entrapta said, leaning against the counter all casual-like, "I'm gonna need... six ingots of photanium... two type-4 coridite crystals... a recording of a dedication ritual to Sadogua... like the biggest, deadest skull you have... like a ton of bricks and stone and stuff... a-a-a-nd ten thousand barrels of type-1 slime medium."

The guy behind the desk, a porcine humanoid, emerged from a vat of slime. "If you had asked the last time Hordak tried to poison Plumeria, I'd have ten thousand barrels you could requisition. Today? I can do fifty."

"Then I will take fifty, my good man!"

"Sure." He placed a sheet of paper. "That'll be 18,200 Hordemarks for the lot."

"Eighteen... friggin'..." Entrapta said, muttering strong words under her breath as she signed the paperwork and filled out her billing information. It was a good thing she was making mad bank upgrading all those drones and manufacturing all those weapons, but eighteen thousand and change (including protection fees) was a good chunk of her wealth. Ah, well... it was in the name of the Mighty Red Goddess. "Here y'go."

"That sheet of paper is covered in slime." The pig-man nodded sagely. "That's good. I like it. I'll see if I can't give you a discount for your good taste."

"Thanks, buddy!" Entrapta said, snapping her fingers and giving him akimbo finger guns. "Hey, uh, quick question. Do you actually make the slime? Like... d'ya secrete it or something?"

"Oh, no. I'm just a connoisseur. They call me... the Slime Pig." He held out one hooved hand.

"That's fine!" Entrapta said, waving him off. "I kinda don't wanna touch you?"

"Eh, that's fair. Just promise you'll use this slime wisely, or at least excessively."

"Yes sir, and yes sir."

"I am content." He took the paperwork in hand and, with the soft pinging of a submarine, descended back into his vat.

"...so do I get a wheelbarrow or something?" Entrapta said.

* * *

When she had the opportunity, Shadow Weaver snuck into Entrapta's laboratory. She hadn't shown her face most of the day, which was fine by her. She had errands to take care of, after all.  
Entrapta had cleaned the laboratory up last night, as instructed; the Slime Pit was tucked into the back, covered in grease pen marks for improvements to make in the next iteration, and many barrels of slime were stacked near it. She ran her hands along one of the barrels, cooing with delight.

Entrapta was laboring away at a workstation.  It consisted of a micro-forge, an extruder for liquid metal, various metalworking tools, and a heavy safety suit--the front half, anyway, the part that would mainly get showered with sparks and blasted with eye-searing plasma lighting, while her ponytails propped her up in relative safety. Also, she was naked in that suit, her back half finally showing more skin than ooze.

"Entrapta!" Shadow Weaver said.

The princess pulled herself out of the protective suit. "Yes, Crimson Goddess?" she said, saluting. The rest of her was cleaning off too; her eyes were not glowing as intensely red as they had last night.

"How are you feeling, servitor?"

"I'm feeling pretty alright!" she said. "Been working on that thing you made me start working on." She grabbed the artifact from her workspace and held it out. "This is just the frame for the first but it should be working at like 50% capacity if you wanna test it out!"

"I do," Shadow Weaver said, gliding her hand into the bulky gauntlet. It was just a frame with no armor, but it bore enormously long claws and a corodite crystal embedded in the back of the palm. She scraped the claws together; magic sparks flew off the points of contact. "Promising. Very promising."

"It's no Black Garnet but it'll help you get closer to what you used to be!" Entrapta said. "Especially when I finish plating that sucker and armoring it up."

"M-hm." She sliced the air. "I believe I'll put it to the test. Bathe, creature."

"In the slime? If you--wait, you mean a slime bath, or...?"

"I need to see how connected the enchantment is to the slime."

"Oh. Okay. Sure."

A few minutes later Entrapta stumbled out of her robotic person-wash. She was purged of slime from the roots of her hair to her toes and she smelled like fruit-flavored shampoo. "Okay, I'm dry and stuff!" Entrapta said. "And I'm feeling nervous and vulnerable like I'm gonna be treated real bad, real soon."

"That's because you will be," Shadow Weaver said. She turned her clawed hand and a hesitantly-levitating slime barrel poured its contents into the Slime Pit prototype. "This enchantment is stronger. It will last longer--and we will keep you sticky as long as we can."

"Yes, m'am!" Entrapta said, speeding into the Pit, which clamped her in. "I, uh--it's not presumptuous to assume you want me to--"

"It's not," Shadow Weaver said, flicking the activation switch across the room from her current position. The ooze flowed in a thick column over Entrapta's head, covering up her nervously-smiling face in moments.

Shadow Weaver examined her talons and thought aloud. "It would be tempting to have you fetch Catra immediately, perhaps while she's sleeping. That would be so simple... and so if you fail, the game is done. Of course, you've been lying to them. Why be aggressive when we have the element of trust? Tell her the substance has been perfected and it needs only testing. ... Hmm. Perhaps..."

She turned to look at her servant. Entrapta was squirming in the clamps again, even as she maneuvered her enormous ponytails to soak in the slime and smoothed the muck over her body where it had yet to trickle. She would have to refresh the enchantments periodically...

"...hm. Catra most certainly has a stronger will than you. If you can falter in a little over a day... yes. Just a little longer, then. Just a little longer..." She lay her talons across her mask, seeing the world through a cage of blades.

Just a little longer 'til she would taste revenge.

* * *

Two days later, Scorpia returned from a nice stroll through the Fright Zone to find a picture pinned to the rumpus room with a blob of slime. The drawing was of an excited Entrapta; the words read "Buff ready--come get some!"

"A buff," Scorpia said wistfully. "I _love_ getting buffed."

Not much later, she knocked on Entrapta's door. The door swung open and an extremely naked (but for those fancy black goggles) and slimy Entrapta greeted her. "He-e-y, babe," she said.

"Oh, you were doin' sexy!" Scorpia said. "And you did it real good! I like that." She gave her a loving pat on the head. She felt an odd wave of tiredness radiate out from where she touched. She spoke, but the words were caught by a yawn. "Oof... you're really giving me bedroom eyes, Trapmaster. Maybe I should wait 'til tomorrow."

"What? Nawww. I wanna see you super strong right now. I mean, uh, way stronger than you even normally are." She gestured to her invention. "Simply step into the... the... Strongness... Chamber. Mark two."

The Strongness Chamber Mark Two reached from the floor to the ceiling, and Entrapta like having ceiling room to swing down from so that wasn't a small thing. It was constructed from spare bricks--some built into a base, a waist-deep pit filled knee-high with green slime. The back of it was a brick wall and a pair of crimson columns; at its apex was a tyrantisaur skull, jaw filled in with resin so, hypothetically, it could securely hold some substance or the other. Green ooze leaked between its ancient teeth, as if in anticipation.

"Huh!" Scorpia said. "You really went all-out on the aesthetics."

"I was inspired~" Entrapta said, patting her on the back.

Scorpia stifled a second yawn. "So, I just sorta climb in?"

"Yep-a-doodle, Sting-y Sally!"

"Rockin'!" She vaulted the pit, landing with a splash. "Woooho _hoahoah_ , gross!" she said, smiling. She was glopped up to her thighs, one of the splatters nearing her cleavage window. "I love it. So, is that head gonna like dump slime on me, or--"

A bony claw burst from the pool of slime; three talons pinned her in place. "Woah, now," Scorpia said. "This is a little un-gentle..."

"Oh, that's to surprise Catra," Entrapta said, sitting on the short staircase leading up and inot the pit. "When it's her turn that thing's gonna make her freak."

"It will!" Scorpia said. "That's some forward thinki..."

A light clicked on in her head.

"Wait a minute."

She looked behind her.

Midway up the wall was a bas relief of a familiar mask.

"Why's Shadow Weaver's face on there? ... Mask, whatever."

"Because it is _my_ Slime Pit, you witless brute," a familiar voice intoned.  A shadow cast by a robot arm was not a shadow. It rose, gained definition, and resolved into Shadow Weaver. She was still hunched as she had taken to doing in her days of being kicked around by Catra, but now it was not from defeat but from the sheer weight of the massive clawed gauntlets on her arms.  It was forged from photanium, a coridite impurity staining the weapon indigo; shadows dripped from the blades. She raised her right arm and pointed at Scorpia.

"Hey, don't be... okay, actually, I guess we call you bad stuff all the time so it'd be pretty hypocritical to complain--" Scorpia said.

Shadow Weaver snapped her claws.

The skull tilted forward, the mouth opening; green slime poured out in a syrupy waterfall.

"Meep," Scorpia said, holding her breath and closing her eyes. The slime splashed onto her short hair, soaking it all in an instant, and from there over her rough face. It drizzled down her chitinous shoulders and arms, her broad, powerful chest; it sluiced down her muscular thighs where it met the rest of the slime. She didn't struggle like Entrapta; she simply stood and took it, head held high.

Her thrashing tail was the last to succumb to the ooze. Entrapta snatched it with a ponytail; it lost a little of its fight, enough for her to force it under the gruesome flow.

Slowly, Scorpia's shoulders fell slack; then her head slumped; then she draped over the battle-bones claw, letting out a sigh that blew a plump bubble over her lips. The claw withdrew and Scorpia belly-flopped into the muck, her tail waving absently.

Entrapta giggled. "I can't believe she held out that long! What a toughie. I _love_ toughies, I ever mention that?"

Shadow Weaver glided towards the pit. Not a real glide, not yet, but with effort she could move with smooth paces. "Rise," she said.

Scorpia pushed herself up, her features obscured by thick streams of muck. She opened her eyes. Blazing crimson, now, just like Entrapta's. "Well, now..." she said. "I don't know if I'm feeling stronger but I'm feeling pretty..."

"Hor-ny~?" Entrapta said.

"Huh! I kinda am." She looked over Shadow Weaver. "Are you this horny all the time? 'Caause, uh, I ain't this horny most of the time but... I definitely am now."

"That is irrelevant," Shadow Weaver said.

"Alright, master. I getcha." She looked around. "Mind if I rub one out real quick? ... Please?"

"After," Shadow Weaver said, beckoning. "We have a task to perform. Where is Catra?"

* * *

Catra lay in her bunk, curled up around a mercifully modern music device, earphones on, [soft music playing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDnOsRvwIpE). She had been out this morning on a mission with Dragstor and Mosquitor, raiding a lair of runaways from the drone assembly lines. She had requested Tung Lashor join her instead of Dragstor, but he had been cryogenically frozen by Frosta on a sortie and even after thawing out he was still far from field-ready--and Dragstor, being a full-conversion cyborg, was one of a few of Hordak's heavies who Mosquitor never pondered betraying for a quick meal.

So they found the hideout--a warehouse that managed to disappear from official records and had been converted to housing. It only took one corpse (courtesy of Mosquitor) and a few horrendous drubbings (herself, Dragstor) to convince them all to surrender. Production efficiency improved by .03 percent within the hour.

It was a nice, pat victory, and it was bothering the hell out of her. Something about the way that reptile man's eyes just sort of--bloomed, pupils overtaking irises, as Mosquitor drank his fill and that translucent... organ... filled with blood. Maybe it was Dragstor taking intense pleasure from shattering that one woman's jaw with a revving wheeled limb.

Not that she was only comfortable with Scorpia on a mission, but...

Well, Scorpia...

Scorpia was professional. She knew a corpse was just feed for the horrors spawned by the Fright Zone as a byproduct of its existence, but a prisoner was practically anything. At least a slave, at best a future rival for Force Captain. (Then they could be knocked down to "feed for Fright Zone monsters.")

The Horde's biggest names and strongest personalities were... extreme. They were domesticated monsters like Grizzlor, or happy accidents like Chief Research Scientist Modulok. Lost souls like Entrapta... or herself. Shadow Weaver had been a happy accident of a lost soul, and as far as Catra cared a monster that feigned domestication. Scorpia's family didn't have a tragic backstory; they capitulated first and hardest and Scorpia was their biggest winner.

Maybe that was why Scorpia was the best-adjusted personality she'd ever met. She wasn't raised by Shadow Weaver as a constantly-kicked pet whose life was dangled in front of Adora to make her stay in line.

And look what treating Adora with poison sweetness had done.

The vague sadness of the music reached a crescendo. She hit the "next" button with her thumb and an excited drumbeat hit her ears.

It briefly covered the sound of Scorpia's entrance into the bunkroom.

* * *

_You do_

_What you're told_

\--ibid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that the tale is continuing in earnest, some author's notes.
> 
> The title is an inversion of the other prominent Explicit-rated fanfic I know of about the Slime Pit, done for... I dunno... vaguely and disproportionatley artsy purposes. Likewise, expect periodic quotations from stuff also written about the Slime Pit, 'cause I am a reference-loving sucker.  
> Me: "I wonder, how efficient would Shadow Weaver be in her plans? She should probably try to subvert the minimum number of people to try and--"  
> Me, to Me: "Slime them. Slime them all."


	3. --Like a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was unsure if this would Go There, but it did... so be warned that molestation and offscreen rape happen in this chapter. If it's too disturbing, I have a "still dark but not as dark" alternative... but a fairly sensitive pre-reader of mine gave the events in question the okay, so... carpe diem.
> 
> This is hopefully as dark as it gets. If it's still too much, comment away.

_Undertow has come to take me_

\--"[A Drowning](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_GqVFa5GBA)," How to Destroy Angels

* * *

 

Catra noticed the smell first--that chemical odor that was not organic but not entirely synthetic. There were notes of...

"Scorpia...?" Catra said, lifting her head up. She yanked her earphones off. "Did the princess make a mess out of you--"

She saw Scorpia rear back, claw wide open, a split second before she tried to clamp it around her neck. She rolled with Scorpia's attack, the claw snapping inches over her neck as she splayed beneath it. Droplets of green slop splashed against her skin and that nauseating rush of tiredness struck her. She rolled out of the bunk as Scorpia stung where her torso had been an instant before it struck. She flung herself between Scorpia's legs, powering through the weakening feeling as she bolted for the door.

"Yoop!" Entrapta said, dropping from the ceiling.

Catra roared, leaping over the telltale dribbles of mucous and tucking into a ball and rolling through the opening door as the princess landed heavily behind her. The princess made an excited sound; she always opened with Lefty, so she kicked to the right and avoided a snap of slime-soaked ponytail.

The puddle misted her with the awful stuff, though, and she grimaced as she darted down the right-hand hallway. A plan unfolded: get the hell out of the building, hop onto a sky sled, drive to a sending chamber to send Hordak a message that her team was attacking her, sit back and wait for instructions.

It was an alright plan, though not a great one, and either way it failed to account for one of Entrapta's modded Horde drones stepping into the hall, bringing a pair of newly bolted-on weapons to bear. They were simple spray nozzles attached to propellant tubes and thick tanks of--

Slime.

She purposefully lost her grip, skidding ahead chaotically as the robot fired short bursts of goop at her. She kicked off the wall to the ceiling and from there back at the first wall, the robot's calculated firing arc spurting slime at the wall across from her. She ran along her wall a few steps, trying to plan her next attack.

At which point a second drone also bearing two slime sprayers stepped up.

"Ngaaaaaahhhh _I hate slime!_ " Catra shrieked, leaping directly at the drone. The firing arc met behind her; she latched on with her razor-like fingernails and rode the momentum, slicing terrific gouges across the robot's surface. The drone turned around, trying to make her a target for the first attack robot; she ripped open its back maintenance panel and sliced away at wiring and circuitry, the chill shock of electricity numbing her forearm. The drone slumped to the ground with a mourning beep; using the machine as cover Catra sprinted away on two legs, low to the ground and balancing with her tail.

Scorpia stood in her way, Entrapta rising above her to block even more access.

"Hey, babe," Entrapta said, fondling a naked, slime-coated breast.

"It'll be neat if you just came with us," Scorpia said. Her hips were fidgeting, like a catchy beat had started taking hold of her; tragically Catra knew exactly what that meant.

"Fuck off," Catra said, and bounced for a gap to Scorpia's side that Entrapta hadn't covered. Entrapta moved to conceal it; Catra's leap took her near enough to the wall that she wall-jumped to the other side. Scorpia didn't move to stop her as she ran along the wall; instead she just swung her claw, sending slime droplets spraying in a wide arc where Catra's path took her. She couldn't dodge; the stuff splashed against her hair and back. She felt the strength leave her legs; she tried to clamp onto the wall with all four sets of claws but suddenly the wall seemed so much stronger, her claws helplessly skittering along its surface.

She landed hard on her shoulder, and Scorpia swung her tail at Catra. A glob of slime rolled on the curve of her stinger flung out and splashed her in the back of the head. Fatigue radiated down her body. She couldn't get to her feet no matter how she tried, floudnering in place on the cold tile floor.

Entrapta stood over her, dripping onto her. "Whoopsie-do," she said. "Here comes the _goo_ ~"

Lefty curled around Entrapta, squeezing firmly; muck seeped into Catra's skin, and all strength left her. She was limp in Entrapta's ponytail like a fly in treacle. Catra's head swam; she felt like she'd just fought her way through a marathon. "What... what the hell did you do, Entrapta?" she said, straining feebly against her yards and yards of prehensile hair woven around her lithe body.

"Aw, nothing much," Entrapta said; she walked down the hall, Scorpia strutting just behind her. "Just helped the Mighty Red Goddess invent a freakin' miracle. And now you get to be the next lucky sucker to enjoy it."

"Let me go," Catra said between grit teeth.

"What, before the fun?" Scorpia said. "Trust me, you're gonna love it. It took me a sec, but once you get used to it--man!" She stroked her torso, the slime glistening on her muscles as they strained through her clothes. "It's just... ahh, man. It's just so cool."

Catra tried to think of something to say, faltered, and then thought of what Adora would say in a situation like this. "Scorpia, Entrapta... you're better than this. You wouldn't get punked by some gross enchantment. Whoever's put you up to this--fuck, it's Shadow Weaver, isn't i--" Entrapta's ponytail slithered into her mouth, the taste of slime filling her mouth. She gagged, trying to spit out the probing hair and failing.

"Got it in one, baby!" Entrapta said. "I think she's gonna be pretty pleased to see you."

* * *

"Catra..." Shadow Weaver said, brandishing her left Terror Claw (so she had come to think of them) at the magickat squirming in Entrapta's ponytail. "If I had more sense I would kill you here and now for your impertinence."

"Hang on, mighty goddess," Entrapta said, "maybe you two can talk this over." She removed her gag from Catra's mouth.

"Eat my ass, bitch," Catra said, flexing every muscle and clawing at Entrapta's soaked locks to try and cut free.

Shadow Weaver closed the distance between herself and Catra. "You've cost me everything I gave my life to accomplish, you disgusting upstart stray. My love of Adora was too sincere to take away her pet. If I had only exercised my better judgment, I'd have drowned you like the runt you are at the first sign of trouble." She reached to touch Catra, who stretched away from her; Entrapta simply stepped closer and Shadow Weaver rested the flat of one finger-blade on Catra's face, the edge glittering in the laboratory's light.

"You'd have lost her then and there, you _cunt_ ," Catra said.

Shadow Weaver tsked. "She'd move on. There are many magickats, and you all look alike. There is only one Adora..." She chuckled. "And she will be mine again."

"Never," Catra spat.

"...What was that?" Shadow Weaver said. "You'd rather Adora remain lost among our enemies?"

"Yeah," Scorpia said, "did you just wish Adora be stuck with the bad guys?"

"Maybe you need this even more than we did," Entrapta said. "Or at least you need to get laid." She looped a lock of hair between Catra's legs and rubbed against her crotch. Catra twitched, yowling as she pinned her legs tightly together to keep her out. "Permission to make a pun, Shadow Weaver?"

"Denied." She took her Terror Claw away; the urge to cut her open and turn her intestines to violin strings was too profound for herself to stay objective. "You've lost what little mind you have to lose, Catra. Abandonment of Horde property means it's the Slime Pit for you."

Entrapta hefted Catra well overhead and sang a triumphant fanfare. She carried Catra to the Slime Pit, still hard at work trying to give her an intimate rub.

"Stop it. Stop it, Entrapta, please..."

"But it feels good, doesn't it?" she said, taking a step onto the stairs leading to the basin.

"Not now," Catra gasped, "Not like... this..."

"Eh... you'll feel better about it in a sec. Anyway, have fun!" She dropped Catra over the basin.

Catra spun mid-air, swinging for the back wall; she just grazed the stone, incapable of getting her bearings before belly-flopping into the slime. It was thigh-deep for Scorpia and hip-deep for her; she vanished out of sight with a mighty splash. In moments she clawed her way out, unrecognizably coated in the dense green fluid; with her ears tucked tight against her head she was barely recognizable as a magickat.

She floundered away from the wall, floundering for the side; the bone claw rose from the slime, the arm catching her between the legs as the three talons pinned her in place in the air above the basin. Her tail had barely escaped sliming, and it jut straight out from her lower back puffed out to full size. She writhed in the trap's grip, slipping her arm from under the right claw; she leaned her shoulder away from the middle, but the first had pinned her once more by the leg...

"Impressive..." Shadow Weaver said. "She should already be succumbing to the enchantment. And yet... she wriggles."

Entrapta was rubbing herself with both hands. "She's even tougher than you, Scorpie!"

Scorpia was straddling one of the corners of the basin, furiously humping a smoothly-polished outcropping. She stared in silence, beyond some muted grunts of satisfaction.

"You haven't even poured yet, Great Goddess Shadow Weaver!" Entrapta said. "You're so patient, you know, so..."

Catra spat out a mouthful of slime and dared open her eyes. They were still her colors, and she was furious, meeting Shadow Weaver's unblinking stare through her mask and holding firm. She thought of what Scorpia suggested the other day, and decided, yes, now was the time to deploy it:

"Your mama was a Satyr Master."

Shadow Weaver made a furious noise in her throat. "Pour the slime."

The skull opened wide, a red glow pulsing in its vacant eye sockets. It tilted forward and a flood of slime cascaded over Catra; there was so much of it, so thick, all at once, that Catra was nearly pushed from the claw. She held fast, and it held fast, and her slender, athletic body was totally lost to the ooze, even her tail. The slime soon overflowed the banks of the pit, flooding past Entrapta's feet and across Scorpia's crotch and thighs.

The head clamped shut, stemming the flow. The claw was a green lump once the flow ceased; it opened, revealing a smaller, curled lump that was Catra, utterly engulfed by the enchanted filth. Delicately, the claw lay her in Entrapta's outstretched ponytail; panting from her body-wracking orgasm, stumbling on two legs and one ponytail, she carried the pit's latest victim to Shadow Weaver. She upended her ponytail and Catra dribbled to the floor on thick strings of slime, landing gently in a puddle on the ground.

"Rise," Shadow Weaver said.

Catra lay breathing on the floor. Her tail twitched, flicking like a whip.

"Rise..."

Catra lifted her head. With thick, sluggish movements she propped herself up on one leg, then pushed up from the puddle. Slime dripped in thick waves down her body. Her hair was soaked to a thick mop mostly stuck to her back. Her ears were just beginning to un-tuck from her head. A bubble of slime formed over her mouth and popped with her breathing, like with Scorpia.

"Catra. When you were six, and you dropped the Testament of Carnamagos in a paint bucket, what did I tell Adora?"

Catra spoke: "That if I was bad, you would kill me. And that magickats are inherently sinful, so I would go to hell."

"I lied, Catra. Tell me, what's the truth?"

"When I die, I will disappear forever. Animals don't have souls." She opened her eyes. Scorpia's and Entrapta's eyes were little embers of red in white sclera; Catra's eyes blazed crimson in their entirety. "Do you want to kill me, Shadow Weaver?"

"It would please me to no end," Shadow Weaver said. An enormous smile spread under her mask. It hurt, but it was a hurt she was glad to embrace. "But I need your services before I erase you. We will deliver Hordak the She-Ra. The Rebellion will follow shortly thereafter. When I am done with you, Adora will see you out the door."

"Yes, Shadow Weaver." She balled her fists, the points of her claws digging into her wrist.

"How do you enjoy your new integument?"

"I loathe it, Shadow Weaver."

"Alas," Shadow Weaver said, waving her off. "Entrapta, Scorpia... my more worthwhile servants. Do with her as you please. Catra, do try to smile. It's a serviceable stand-in for charm."

Catra smiled like she was posing for a photograph. It did not reach her eyes, which were trained on Shadow Weaver as she took a seat and watched, toying with her new weapons.

"Aaaaahhhh _she said we could have you_ , Catra!" Entrapta said, creeping up on Catra. She touched her face, pulling off a long string of slime from her cheek and licking it up, swallowing it with satisfaction. "Ahh, aren't you excited?!"

"No," Catra said, still smiling.

"Man, it's too bad," Scorpia said, scooping them both up in a hug, clenching Catra's leg between hers and grinding away. "You're so damn _hot_ like this, Catra. Like, you're a handsome lady most of the time but gods take us, you're so..."

"Please," Catra said, still smiling. "Don't..."

"Relax, babe.  If you're feeling bad, we'll hafta make you feel bet- _ter_ ~" Entrapta said, pressing her chest to Catra's.

"Kill me," Catra said, still smiling. "Please, kill me..." she giggled.

They were on her, and Catra smiled all the way through their loving violation.

Shadow Weaver chuckled. "How affectionate you all are. Enjoy her while you can. Try to enjoy yourself too, Catra. Your time is short, after all... and there's nobody on Etheria who loves you."

* * *

Adora looked over her shoulder at the trackless forest behind her. "Hey, Glimmer," she said. "Don't suppose you feel... that?"

"Feel what?" Glimmer said, looking up from her magic readout equipment.

"Sorta like... no, it's... probably nothing," Adora said.

Glimmer hooked the device to her waist. "If you're feeling weird, it's probably some kind of Crazy Destiny Stuff."

"...shit, you're right. Should we call off the She-Ra tests?"

"Hell, if something goes down, at least you're ready to thunder punch it, right?"

"I guess you're right."

* * *

_Maybe I'd just disappear_

_If I can't keep my head above the tide_

\--ibid.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...boy, you can tell the last couple days have really sucked for me, huh...


	4. What I've Been Missing

_Got a moon above me but no one to love me_

\--"[Thrill of Romance...?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf3z_h2BVzU)", Nurse With Wound

* * *

 

This part of the Whispering Woods was nearly lifeless. There was a clearing with flowers growing to knee height, tall, sturdy trees that would absorb any possible collateral damage, and best of all it was not overly far from the Crystal Castle if Adora needed to check in with Light Hope.

"Alright," Adora said in the direction of a video recorder mounted nearby, "today we're gonna be testing out some of She-Ra's alternate, uh... costumes, maybe?"

"Stat spreads!" Bow said, from his vantage point behind a sturdy tree.

"How 'bout... 'formes?'" Glimmer said, from her vantage point in the branches of a different tree. "With an 'e' so we know it's fancy."

"Silent 'e's, my mortal nemesis," Adora muttered. "Anyway: names later, stuff now. I'm going to turn into She-Ra--" she raised the Sword of Protection--"and try out my different whatever-they're-calleds. FOR THE HONOR OF GRAYSKULL!"

The transformation swept over her, and she stood revealed in the clearing--enormous, broad-shouldered, wide-hipped, powerful and graceful, and more real than either Glimmer or Bow could hope to be.

"Looking good!" Bow said.

Adora concentrated and a line of statistics crossed her vision. She saw the word STANDARD in the runic script, followed by a line of cryptic statistics: COOL +1, HARD +1, HOT +1, SHARP +0, WEIRD +0. She read the names and numbers out loud.

"What do they mean?" Glimmer said.

"I have no idea," Adora said. "Let's see what happens when we turn on the battle armor." She thrust the Sword of Protection into the sky again, and the golden breastplate snapped into place. Her stats changed. "Alright... this one is one harder and sharper but two less hot. Not that I know what they mean by 'hot.'"

"Maybe it's a speed thing! You're slower with the armor on, right?"

"Yeah," Adora said, rapping her knuckles on her armor.

"So 'hot' is like, 'wow, you're running hot!' Maybe!" Bow said.

Adora punched the air. "I think you're on to something," she said. "Alright, next form..."

"With an 'e?'" Glimmer said.

"Maybe! Let's try out the Thunder Punch." She raised her sword and swapped out her gold breastplate for red webbing and gauntlets lined with four raised disc-shaped studs apiece. She'd seen the name alongside a depiction of a previous She-Ra shaking apart a mountain with one blow; that's what inspired this particular jaunt. "Alright. This one is 'yes' hot and 'nah' cool. You guys have your ear protection in, just in case they aren't kidding about the 'thunder' part?"

"Always," Glimmer said, touching her ear.

"Yeah, definitely!" Bow said, and by the time he remembered that he had forgotten She-Ra had already thrown a punch so fast he barely registered it before the air exploded.

When her fist snapped at the end of her strike, a mighty boom split the air, a sonic shockwave pummeling the clearing and the trees nearby. Glimmer wound up falling from her tree, teleporting into the clearing where her momentum carried her tumbling across the grass. She-Ra caught her and set her on the ground.

"Wo-o-ow!" Glimmer said, eyes alit. "That was freakin' cool!"

Bow leaned out from behind his tree. "Did it work? ... We doin' good here? ... _mulp_?" He dug his finger in his ear, trying to find the chip of bark or small insect that was blocking his hearing.

"Are you gonna have to see Knight Nurse again?" Glimmer said.

" _Pardon_?" Bow shouted.

"Yep," Glimmer said.

"Did you bring any healing supplies?" She-Ra said.

* * *

Shadow Weaver watched the pageant dispassionately. Catra's subjugation was functionally complete, but tenuous; her enchantment would require more frequent refreshment than the brute and the idiot's. It would also make cleaning her up to parade her around on errands somewhat... difficult. The awful pink one was always acting, at best, like a distracted eight-year-old, so her wandering around with a sheen of mucous was hardly unusual; and the cream puff was so cheerful and non-threatening that losing her wits to the slime was hardly noticeable.

She would need a stronger hold over Catra's mind before she could trot her out, especially if she needed to be clean. There was an issue: she had pressed the Terror Claws to their limit casting that old spell. She would need another level of power before she could ensure control over the beast.

But that was just fine. Power was in abundance; she could find more. And it wouldn't be long before she would be reunited with the Black Garnet. And then--why, then, she may not even need a means to prolong her control over Catra.

The next step then was to further her plans. These three had failed to stop She-Ra time after time; she'd need to multiply their force before making a play. Of course, she had an idea already.

"Entrapta," she said.

"Yes, mighty god over all?" Entrapta said, taking her mouth away from Catra.

"You were in the company of princesses before joining the Horde. Who was the strongest among them, in your estimation, besides the She-Ra?"

"Well!" she said, taking a seat on her ponytail, "If my memory doesn't fail me, I think it would be-e-e... Perfuma." She nodded, as if someone else had suggested Perfuma and she was judging them correct. "Yes, my boundless divine master. Mistress?"

Shadow Weaver bid her continue.

"Uh--well, she has a lot of magic power, and she can make plants whenever. So that's really useful! Because Mermista needs water and I just don't really like Frosta that much--I know she's like three but I can't lie--and I didn't really get to know Bow or Glimmer that much? So! Perfuma! Plant princess!"

Shadow Weaver nodded. "That will require an excursion to Plumeria. Shall we transport the Slime Pit, or create a new one in situ?"

"Situ! Situ!" Entrapta said, hopping in place like the excited child she was. "I'm like developing a... a plan or something! Plus, like, uh, we really don't wanna break that one because sweet _Daoloth_ those fossils really put a dent in my wallet..."

"Very well. Scorpia, let the feline go. I have need of it."

* * *

The three young warriors took their lunch in the midst of the clearing. It was eerily silent; life had yet to return after the world-shaking sound of the Thunder Punch. Adora stared at the clouds gently moving overhead and chewed on her grape-and-raspberry-jelly sandwich, filled so thickly it felt one removed from just drinking out of a jar directly.

"Must be nice having all those powers," Glimmer said, slurping up leftover pan-fried noodles with pork and onion. "I mean, don't get me wrong... I like teleporting, a lot. But I've always been kinda jealous of you variable-effect types."

"It's pretty nice," Adora said, smiling. "I'm starting to think there really is no limit to what I can do, like... hypothetically. I just gotta grow into it." She chased a bite of sandwich with some milk from her thermal mug. "It's a little scary. I gotta start thinking about how I'm gonna, you know, use it. Especially, like, regular She-Ra is good for a lot of stuff... maybe I shouldn't lean into the other forms too much?"

"I 'unno," Bow said around a mouthful of Hey! protein bar. "I got a lotta kinds'a arrows pretty much all the time. It's always great. 'cept when I use up all of one type and I can't make another one fast enough..."

"Eh... that works for you, sure," Adora said. "I've got, whattayacallit... executive failure. Too many options and I freak the hell out. Catra always used to shut me down that way. 'That's a problem for Future Catra and Adora...' and, ah... well... you see how she gets to me."

"Moving on," Glimmer said, throwing something at Adora. Adora snatched it out of the air.

"Wait... a taffy-and-peanut bar?" Adora said. "Are you tryin' to get me to pull a tooth out? Is that what the sandwich is about?"

"Wait, did you throw her _my_ dessert?" Bow said.

"Your lunch is seriously three bars of _stuff_?" Glimmer said.

"Not 'stuff,'" Bow said. "Hey! for protein, Yo! for fiber, and Have-a-Slab-a because it tastes good and I like it."

"I have no idea how you're that ripped with all the food you take in bar form," Glimmer said, smirking.

"Yeah, well... you... have really... killer... thighs... from all the kicking and jumping."

"I do," Glimmer said, slapping her outer thigh. "Thank you for noticing."

"No problem," Bow said, with a little blush.

Adora giggled. Maybe that vague feeling of doom was just some wandering sensation of melancholy passing over her head like that cloud.

* * *

Kyle hummed along with the music playing through the tinny cockpit radio. The type-4 transport skiff he piloted was a civ-rated transports, a type that actually had music capability without needing someone to bypass the wavelength blockers; he took advantage of it from the moment he'd been press-ganged into driving one of these unwieldy bastards through the lower airspace of the Fright Zone, under reaching arches and past buildings that slowly pulsed as if breathing.

The former Shadow Weaver tower was his destination. It was blessedly uneventful a trip, even moreso to land on the loading bay. Six of Entrapta's modded Horde drones were waiting, all of them carrying multiple slime barrels. Jeez, what the hell had she invented today?

He hopped out of the driver's side of the type-4, keys in hand. "Hello?" he said, looking for an organism present. "Force Captain?  I've got your delivery for you here.  ... Force Captain? ... Catra? ... Scorpia? ... Do I have to ask for Entrapta...?" He held the keys out, holding on with his pinky and thumb in case one of them had learned invisibility and wanted to snatch them out of his hand.

The drones stepped past him, loading barrel after barrel into the skiff's ample cargo hold. There was no sign of the Big Three.

"Funky," he said, following one of the drones as it passed him by. This one had some aftermarket slime-sprayers mounted onto it and some freshly-repaired damage in its rear compartment. (Ha, that sounded dirty.) "So, uh, are you just--"

"You don't need to know, child," Shadow Weaver said.

He nearly jumped out of his boots before remembering that Shadow Weaver was now legally incapable of hurting a fly. That wasn't hyperbole. He'd seen her struggle to shake one off her head while she was in the company of Horde Troopers. She was as harmless-looking as she ever was nowadays, a bedraggled bedsheet ghost instead of the looming specter of evi--of terror that she had once been. So he just smiled, if nervously, and said, "Hello, Shadow Weaver. Where's Catra?"

"Still preparing for our journey into Rebel territory. We will be taking the skiff ourselves and shall not require backup."

"Alright." He didn't like the sound of it, but they'd done this sort of thing before. When you were Force Captain, if you had a feeling you could handle a task with three agents, you could go ahead and do that. And Catra had done it just this morning, come to think of it. With Mosquitor, that freaking psycho, too! "Good luck on you guys' mission." He handed over the keys to her; she took them gingerly and uncertainly. "Have a save drive."

"I appreciate the gesture," Shadow Weaver said with the tone of someone who'd rather have been given a grenade with a pulled pin.

"And I'll be off now," Kyle said, turning around and nearly walking right off the loading dock. "Right. To the public transport requisition pad!"

Shadow Weaver slid the key up her sleeve and slid into the cargo bay, sliding past stacks of barrels towards three in particular. The lids were not as secured; in fact, there was a noticeable gap in each lid, enough to, say, let some air in.

The sorceress held out her hands. Two of the drones approached, each deploying one of her Terror Claws from a storage compartment. She slid her arms into each and felt the warm flow of magic energy return. She pried open the leftmost barrel.

Entrapta lay partly buried in ooze, looking dreamy. "Hey, Shadow Weaver," she said, smiling.

"I need you to drive."

"Can do, mighty goddess~"

* * *

The day wore on into the night, and the three heroes decided to camp out in the Whispering Woods rather than return to the castle. They discussed She-Ra's costumes/stat spreads/formes and cool books they'd read and nice music they'd listened to lately and generally anything except what She-Ra might be using those fancy new duds on. Because life was already hard, you know? They had a minute to themselves. Why not enjoy it?

Adora turned in early, falling asleep in a pop-up tent (because they were in the mood for camping, but not camping as hard as they occasionally did). She liked having a roof over her head some nights, even if it was just a canvas roof, and with the gentle sounds of the wind and crickets and Glimmer and Bow's casual chatter around the fire she had plenty to keep her mind off of everything that kept her from sleeping.

Of course, when her eyes fluttered shut and she drifted into the dark, the nightmare began.

It wasn't one of her usual vision nightmares, but it felt like a vision. She was trudging through waist-deep muck, reaching for a rocky shore. Her muscles lacked all power, her legs feeling drained of blood and her arms struggling to push through the treacly goo she was trapped in. She was... she was She-Ra?

She never had helpless dreams as She-Ra. She had dreams about killing people as She-Ra, that's for sure--a hug breaking ribs, a pulled strike with the pommel of the Sword of Protection cracking open a temple, or...

...or just digging her blade through a grateful Catra's ribcage. Those nightmares were pretty bad.

This... this sensation of hopeless trudging... this was new. This was wrong. In the waking world, her breathing sped up and she twitched under her covers.

In the dream, she was nearly to the shore when a skeletal claw rose from the slime and jabbed her in the chest, right between her clavicles, and pinned her against a wall; she looked up and saw more of the stuff slowly pouring down over her.

Catra was here, standing on the rocky outcroppings surrounding the pool of slime. Adora was screaming for her. Not a dramatic mid-battle declaring of her name; not a plea, not an order or an invocation. She was screeching, lungs hurting, throat run ragged. What was she saying?

"Please. _Please! Wake up!_ "

Catra was caked in green slime, the same stuff threatening to bury Adora. She was barely recognizable, but she'd know Catra at a glimpse; hell, they'd both dug foxholes in the mud in training, she was used to seeing Catra filthy. Her old friend was smiling. Her eyes were burning red, her tears streaks of blood down her cheeks, and she was--

\--Adora was gasping for breath and sitting up in her bedroll like a sweaty caterpillar. She sat in the still, chill air of the tent feverishly wiping cold sweat from her head and hair before reality reasserted itself. No sea of pus, her throat was fine... maybe a little raspy from the dryness of the air tonight. She felt for her canteen and icy water simultaneously punished and soothed her dry throat.

Glimmer snored away next to her. If only she knew.

Adora lay back on her pillow, flipping it around to a side less soaked with sweat, and after several minutes her heart was still pounding. So she climbed out of her bedroll and crept through the flap with the Sword of Protection in hand.

Becoming She-Ra would wake Glimmer up--but Bow was up, tending a small fire, looking glumly into the guttering flames.

"Hey," she said, softly, resting the point of her sword in the soft grass.

"Hey," Bow said, waving. "You feelin' kinda sinister tonight?"

"Yeah." She took a seat on one of the big rocks she'd found for the purpose of sitting on around the fire. "Bad dreams."

"Seems like you've never had a good dream," Bow said. "Like, at least as long as you've been with us, every time you've said, 'oh, hey, fellas, I had like the most _criz-azy_ dream last night,' you look like you lost a ten-round chessboxing match to the Sandman."

"Touche." She sat with her face balanced on her hands and her elbows digging into her thighs.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"I probably should..." She described it to him, leaving out the detail of Catra's expression.

Bow looked sickly. "Eeeeuughhh. That's so gross and... sad."

"Sad?"

"She-Ra's a total badass. Do you ever feel helpless as her?"

"Uh..." Well, now, to tell the truth, or-- "In a weird way, kinda, sometimes." She glanced back at the Sword of Protection. "I'm so powerful, so huge. If I go too far I can just cut somebody down like that." She snapped her fingers. "Sometimes when I'm really, really intent on stopping somebody, it's... I'm afraid I'm gonna go too far, one day."

Bow considered what to say next and settled on "Well, shit happens. It's a war. If you ever do go too far it's probably not gonna be your fault."

She groaned. "That's--that makes me feel even more helpless!"

"...sorry."

"Like--if I can't be in control all the time--if it all comes down to some cosmic die roll--however long the rebellion lasts--somebody's gonna die at my hands and I'm gonna have to live with it and I--I don't know how I can."

"Hey," Bow said. "You were pretty scared of being She-Ra once, too."

"I still am."

"But you didn't seem all that freaked out testing out the Instant Deafness Punch earlier."

"I... well..."

"Or the thing with the fast punches that didn't explode the forest!"

"The Flying Fists? Yeah, that one's fun," Adora said, attempting a smile.

"Or the one with the bubble shooter!"

"Yeah, we're gonna... I think there's more to that one. I mean, I'd hope. Or... maybe it's some kind of party mode?"

"Dude." Bow's eyes alit with sparkles. "You gotta pull that one out at Casta's next shindig."

Adora sputtered. "Tell me you didn't just say 'shindig...'"

"I said it and I'm gonna say it. She-e-e-ei-i-i-in-di-i-i-ig-g-guh."

Adora and Bow giggled their way out of the darkness. It was not long before they let the fire die and returned to their tents to get some more sleep. Adora fell asleep to the chorus of Glimmer and Bow's snoring.

And she was in the pit again, and Catra's weeping gaze was upon her.

* * *

_I'd give my soul just to call you my own_

\--Ibid.

 


	5. Persuasion; Coercion

_"Now it's all just a matter of time."_

\--"[The Greater Good](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T8b6CUuxNo)," Nine Inch Nails

* * *

 

In the dreaming hours of morning the night-moons hung low in the ebon sheet of night. At this hour, even the myriad nocturnal creatures of the Plumerian jungles were lying low and preparing to rest. The Horde invaders owned this land at this time of night. Nobody present needed light to see; Shadow Weaver's slaves labored in the dark, lit only by running lights and the lit-cigarette glow of slime-slave irises.

"Careful..." Shadow Weaver said. "Careful, you fools. Lower the skull gently." She gestured with one claw; the drones obeyed, gently affixing the prepared skull into the slot where Entrapta's plumbing would pump slime upwards through the skull and from there into the pit. This design included a hidden reservoir to hold even more ooze, the better to continually pump fresh enchantment energies over a victim. It would assist in breaking stronger wills and enable the weaker-willed to be bathed in greater numbers before necessitating a refill.

"Aaaahhhh it's so _gods damn pretty_..." Entrapta said, rubbing against the back wall and leaving a thick smear of goop along the smoothly-etched back wall. "Man, that new skull drop mechanism is gonna be killer. Gonna save so much wear and tear in the long run... it's not gonna be as dramatic as the tilt, but--"

"I have vetoed the new mechanism," Shadow Weaver said.

"...alright," Entrapta said, pouting. She lowered herself into the basin, emerging with a refreshed slime coating.

Shadow Weaver didn't have to explain herself to her slaves, and did not. But she had her reasons: there was always room for propriety in innovation, and Entrapta's design of the lower jaw swinging straight down while the head looked forward, while indeed a flat improvement in many ways... well, it just wasn't as oppressive as the skull looming forward to deliver enlightenment.

"Rest, pink one," Shadow Weaver said. "And do try to keep out of the pit unless I order you to bathe."

"Yes, goddess," Entrapta said, looking for her barrel.

Shadow Weaver looked at her slaves' creation and smiled once again. Soon. Soon...

"Scorpia," she said, "maintain your vigil over the feline. I will be resting for tomorrow."

"Yes'm!" Scorpia said, saluting. She was watching Catra's barrel, ensuring that she didn't overthrow her enchantment. "Been pretty boring so far, Shadow Weaver, but boring's nothing compared to the thought of disappointing you."

"Indeed," Weaver said, "it is not."

She retired to a sleeping compartment in the skiff, meant for a single pilot to rest at a time during extended journeys. She hung her gauntlets on the weapons rack and rested on the stiff but welcoming bed. More comfortable than what she had been afforded for too damned long.

Suppose it was an effortless sweep of a victory tomorrow; and why not suppose? She-Ra in her pocket, Perfuma as well, maybe even that little brat Glimmer and that brazen slut Bow. What would she do then?

Take the rest of the Plumerians, of course. They could be fierce when motivated, and so many would willingly capitulate with their princess on the winning team. (Those that would not would be tremendously easy to drown in the pit.) From there... well, logically, she would report to Hordak, drink in the adulation, and await further orders. But why interrupt a dream?

With a small army in tow she would take Mystacor. And once Mystacor was hers she would induct Castaspella into the Slime Pit herself. Oh, to imagine the look on Castaspella's face--crammed helplessly into the Slime Pit, begging for escape, pleading for forgiveness, crying like a child with a scraped knee as she was embraced by the slime.

And then... once she owned Casta...

After that it would all be academic. Hordak's new weapon would propagate across the universe. Shadow Weaver was humble; all she wanted was Etheria. She would be happy with it, living out the rest of her days in study of deeper magicks with a planet of thralls waiting on her hand and foot. And each night she would sleep well on a lovely bed, her handmaiden Adora playing for her a lullaby on a very special violin, strung with very special strings.

Shadow Weaver hiked her skirt over her hips and went at her vagina with both hands.

Yes, Scorpia, she was that horny all the time.

* * *

At the crack of dawn, the Holy Morning Chime rang throughout the village. A selection of early risers had gathered in the town square in front of a cheerful and energetic Perfuma. She was bouncing from one heel to the other, dressed in a light chest wrap and panties for comfort and support.

"Good morning, Plumerians who have signed up for the Royal Exercise Program!" Perfuma said, wearing one of her patented enormous smiles.

"Good morning, Princess Perfuma!" those awake enough to respond coherently said. That was nearly half, everybody else managing a mumble or at least nodding their head along as they struggled to climb to wakefulness.

"Don't be afraid if you're not at your full potential yet--it's a slow process for some folk, and that's just fine. We're going to open up with some nice, gradual warm-up stretches to get those joints popping and those tendons flexing! Now..."

An arrow would have flown dramatically past her head and embed in the earth by her feet if it didn't skew super wide and sort of slap a branch and flutter to the ground, hitting the earth fletching-first.

"Huh," Perfuma said, holding up her pointer finger. "Just a moment."

She fetched the arrow; it was weighed down by a rolled scroll. This didn't look like one of Bow's--for one, it was aerodynamically compromised by a lack of a delivery capsule, and for another Bow wouldn't have missed, nor included a Horde emblem bored out of the arrowhead.

She unrolled the scroll, read it six times, and, her skin paled and her pupils pinpricks, turned to her subjects. "I... I think I have some business to attend to, friends. I'll... uh... next time. Maybe do some jumping jacks if you feel like it. Excuse me." She ran to her hut to get dressed.

"I'm _very_ pregnant," that one woman said, hand resting on top of her gravid belly.

"When _aren't_ you pregnant?" an old man said. "Mother goddess, woman, you're going to break something if you don't take a break."

"I defy you to stop me," she said, shooting him the evil eye.

"I'll petition the doctors in concern of your wellness and you can't damn well stop me doing that!" the old man said, throwing the horns in response.

Princess Perfuma rushed past them on a rapidly-growing and -perishing carpet of vines, her dress billowing behind her. "Excuse me!" she said.

The pregnant woman took the opportunity to vanish from sight in the wake of the princess.

"Damn your hide, lady," the old man said, cocking a crossbow. He noticed the sea of wide eyes and agape mouths. "Oh, come on! I'm not gonna shoot her! I wouldn't shoot her even if she wasn't a mother! I just gotta--I just gotta work this angst out, don't you see?" He fired the crossbow into the tree the message arrow bounced off of. "Raaaagh!"

* * *

Perfuma reread the scroll.

"Meet me in the jungle at the following coordinates (or three klicks SE from those Crystal Falls I read about) -- XOXO Entrapta"

She couldn't...

Could she?

It could be a trap. Why, it had to be a trap. But... what if it wasn't?

She dug around in her dress and found the little communicator that got passed out last week. She flipped it open and typed as fast as she could with her thumbs.

"Hello... all... and... sundry," she muttered. If she didn't talk and type at the same time, she soon lost track of what she meant to say. "I... received... an... oblique... communique... from... a... suspicious... individual... in... whom... I... do... not... wish... to... instill... an... undue... amount... of... hope--what do you mean that's too many 'kay bee? Agh... one of question mark."

She eventually managed to type out her message in full: that she would be venturing into the Breathing Jungle near the Crystal Falls and that she would likely need help if things turned out evil.

"...don't... worry... can... handle... it... by... my... self... if... needed. X O X O. Perfuma!" She hit send on her tenth message and nearly bumped straight into Entrapta.

"Hello!" Entrapta said, hanging upside-down from an ancient, gnarled tree by her ponytails. She looked awful--soaked head to toe in some kind of green substance that certainly didn't smell natural, and also she was naked except for pitch-black welder's goggles. Naked wasn't unusual in Plumeria, but it was very unusual for what she knew about Entrapta. "I know you must've forgotten about me, so let's--"  
  
Perfuma sniffled. Her eyes were heavy with tears; her whole body trembled with an emotion rapidly building up to a critical point.

"...wha?" Entrapta said. Something about this wasn't right. What was Perfuma doing getting worked up over... what, seeing her?

"Nug and Yeb I thought you were de-a-a-a-ad!" Perfuma said in a single sobbing breath, locking Entrapta in a crushing hug that would've made Scorpia jealous of its intensity. She pressed her angular cheek against Entrapta's belly; Entrapta likewise was looking into her skirt just below the under-ribcage cutout. What in the--

Wait.

"What was that about me being dead?" Entrapta said.

"When--when the door--we saw--the flames--we thought--we thought you--we thought you didn't--" Perfuma sobbed with no hesitation or embarrassment into Entrapta's stomach.

"The... wait..." Entrapta felt a wave of nausea rush over her, cutting through the pleasant, distancing haze of the enlightening slime-blessing. "The... oh, right. The incinerator did initialize once the doors closed, didn't they?"

Perfuma nodded, too incoherent from sobbing to contribute.

"And... I suppose... if'n you didn't know how good I am at tunnel crawling..." Something was burning its way into her mind and she didn't like it. What was... ah, yes. Doubt. That was the sensation. She looked down at Perfuma and watched a tear trickle down her cheek, fall through the air, and splash against Entrapta's own.

Oh, no. That wasn't just doubt.

"Please--" Perfuma said. "I... I have..." She slid away on her pile of vines. "I... I can't focus. Can--can you message the princesses? They need to know." She held out a simple text messaging device. "I... I don't think..."

"Yeah... sure." Entrapta took the device, flipped it open, and ran her thumbs along the keyboard. She thought about what in the hell she could possibly say before her slime coating seeped into the seams on the back and shorted it out. "Ah... yep... they got... they know... and stuff." She stuck it between her breasts.

"Please, let me take you to the Crystal Falls," Perfuma said, kneeling 'til she could look Entrapta in the eye (through her goggles). "They are ritually powerful and rich in healing magic. We can ablute you of this awful stuff--" She yawned. "And then I can take a nap and..."

"...why'd you want me to... tell the girls?" Entrapta said.

"They miss you. They'll be so excited that you're safe. You can tell us how you've survived all this time, and--"

"Hang on," Entrapta said, swinging away. "I... I gotta process something..."

"Of course," Perfuma said, wiping her face clean on a bundle of leaves. "What is this? Should I brew some antivenoms?"

Entrapta whistled. "Aaagh, I'm sorry, just..." She shook her head. "I'm just suddenly like full of, whachacall'ems, the brainfucks, and I don't even know how to do the thing that I'm about to do."

"Maybe if you--" Perfuma said, and a burst of something thick and sticky splashed across her back. "--eeeek!" She raced away from the stream on her vine chariot, conjuring a small tree behind her to block the spray. She spun in place to get a look at what squirted her.

A Horde drone pushed free of a pile of fallen leaves and vines. It was a modded drone, equipped with a pair of slime-shooting cannons. It was the same kind of stuff that was dripping off of Entrapta, she realized.  
"You've been captured by Horde drones?!" Perfuma said, growing robust rose vines in the barrels of the slime blasters. It took a few tries; aiming was suddenly harder than it should be. While the drone struggled to clear the blockage with repair arms, Perfuma commanded her vines to wipe the slime from her back, flinging it away behind her. "Don't worry, I'll save you!"

"Thanks, babe!" Entrapta said--much closer than she was a moment ago. Perfuma glimpsed behind her shoulder and saw her old, long-lost friend soaring through the air, hair-tendrils extended, coating of ooze refreshed. She aimed and missed, a wreathe of sunflowers growing around the ancient tree's branches as Entrapta engulfed her in her hair.

The clinging slime seeped through her clothes and into her tanned skin. "Entrapta!" she said, "Whatever's going on, you ca..." Entrapta slipped the tip of a ponytail into her mouth. She retched at the sticky bolus of slime-soaked hair pressing against her tongue and into her throat; she struggled to spit it out.

"Hey," Entrapta said, sliding her goggles up. "I appreciate the concern, you know? I mean, not that you even tried looking for me, you know?" Her irises shone red like warning lights. "You just wanted to make me sad to get you back on your side. Guess what, bitch?"

She ran a lock of hair along Entrapta's crotch; she shied her hips away reflexively.

"Don't..." Perfuma squealed.

"Hrmf. You were pretty excited to touch me earlier. Suddenly I'm in charge and it's 'oh no, don't?'" Entrapta sneered. "That's a big jerk move. You don't really care, do you? You just wanna get brownie points... stupid big brownies like they've never been cut once. Not tiny at all."

Perfuma remembered at last that Entrapta liked tiny food. She tried to communicate the idea of many tiny brownies, the tiniest she'd ever seen, but suddenly it was difficult to even keep her eyes open. She made a whimpering sound into Entrapta's hair-gag.

"Come on," Entrapta said, gesturing to the drone. It scooped her up and set her on a small chair popping out of its top. "You've got a date." She tickled Perfuma's crotch; the little bulge there began to respond against the princess's will. "And maybe we'll get to... Abigail, what base is dick tickling?"

"Query not recognized," Abigail the drone said.

"Dammit, I thought... whatever. Remind me to download a slang dictionary into you when we're back at the Fright Zone."

"The Fright..." Perfuma said around Entrapta's hair; Entrapta cut her off by plunging her ponytail into Perfuma's throat. She gagged on the probing hair.

"Shut up and enjoy the ride."

* * *

Adora awoke in the mid-morning, sooner than she'd like. "Ehrrgh." She turned over in her bedroll and came face to face with her text device, a green notice light blinking. She flipped it open and saw a long list of Perfuma texts. She squinted and scrolled down, trying to parse her needlessly long messages with her sleepy brain.

She only texted this much when it was important, so she decided to just take a moment to cram down a few bites of protein bar and a long drunk of water from her canteen to get her brain rejiggered.

"...hmmm..." she said, once she had enough brainpower to comprehend it. "This... is something to worry about."

Glimmer was already awake and frying up omelets at the campfire when Adora stepped out of her tent. "Yo, Dora!" she said. "You like yours with chives and mushrooms, right?"

"Do we have anything that's quicker to make but not a protein bar?" Adora said. "Perfuma found something in the Breathing Jungle and put out the world's longest APB about it."

"Found what?"

"She was cagey about it, said she didn't want to get our hopes up." She hit "send." A few seconds later the "message not delivered" light blinked. "A-a-and she's out of batteries. How magical."

"How much trouble could she get in?" Glimmer said. "She's a badass. ... Ah, crap, it's like fifty-fifty that she's surrounded by Hordesmen, isn't she..." She groaned and flipped her omelet. "Well, let's wake up Bow and get moving. And cross your damn fingers this isn't gonna be a whole thing."

* * *

Entrapta's special place, it turned out, was a hole blasted in the jungle by black magic. The centerpiece of the clearing was a tall edifice, a wall with no building, capped by the petrified skull of an ancient emperor python. It loomed over a stony pit; from here she could see it was filled with slime.

Several Horde drones patrolled the clearing. And waiting at its center...

"What a perfect catch, Entrapta," Shadow Weaver said, scraping her gauntlets' enormous talons together, the sound hideous and accompanied by a spray of indigo sparks. Shadow Weaver was hunched, land-bound, and her hair limp around her. But she was no less dangerous-seeming thanks to those weapons.

"You better believe it!" Entrapta said, standing astride Abigail with Perfuma presented like a shot rabbit. "This stupid... plant... magic... chick... thought she could get me off my game just by telling me I was loved and missed!"

"What a low friggin' trick!" Scorpia said, rubbing one claw along the other: the classic shame-on-you gesture, as interpreted by serket anatomy.

Perfuma chewed on Entrapta's hair, but to no avail. Her mouth felt like it was worn out from hours of chewing though it had not been near that long. Her whole body felt sore and worn down. Even the effort of magic seemed beyond her. It had to be the slime--it wasn't just foul, it felt accursed.

Entrapta's drone stomped through the clearing towards the building. Shadow Weaver kept pace alongside her. "I see tricking her was beyond you," she said.

"It... got complicated," Entrapta said. "She got in my head, tried to freak me out. Woulda worked if I wasn't such a badass. So-o-o the tricky way kinda didn't pan out, but whatever. I still got the drop on her."

"And she will be unable to interfere with the process?" Shadow Weaver said.

"Naaah," Entrapta said, reeling her hair back. "Watch!" She flung Perfuma into the pit.

Perfuma held her breath and closed her eyes and spun in midair, managing to soak the landing on her shoulder and side. She sank briefly below the muck, but she focused the totality of her energies into creating stumpy trees below her hands to push herself free. She may be slippery and disgusting but she wasn't going to succumb to this stuff. She spat away the slime covering her lips and took a deep, bracing breath, trying to draw on the distant radiant energies of the Heart Bloom.

On her feet, the slime didn't even come up to her mid-thigh. She could take this stuff. Hell, she could overwhelm this stuff. She raised her hands. "Energies of life, I command thee!" she shouted, totally unnecessarily, and directed her magics to the skull overhead.

Wreathes of roses bound the skull tight; she just knew something was coming out of there. She looked straight ahead--suddenly dizzy, as if she'd tilted all the blood in her head to the back and it was rushing back to the front. She bid an assortment of vines grow from the soil near the stony edge of this... mucous divot? Mucous divot.

They were cut to ribbons with one lazy slash of Shadow Weaver's gauntlet weapon. She hadn't even come within reach of the vines; black magic lashes emanating from the talons did the hard work for her. "My confidence in you is rewarded once again," Shadow Weaver said.

"You can't win!" Perfuma said, standing on sturdy branches growing from her mini-trees. She bid them grow, the better to clear the pit, and only then did she see Scorpia charging her with a barrel of slime. She waved her arm, vines sprouting from the earth to tangle up her slime-slick legs.

"Alley-oop!" Scorpia said, flinging the drum's contents even as she tripped. Two hundred and eighty pounds of slime sailed through the air and splashed directly onto Perfuma before she could defend herself; the mass knocked her off her trees, which rapidly withered, and into the pit, burying her in a tide of green.

She choked and gasped, clawing at her face to free herself--but the slime was too thick, and she too weakened, to do more than sink into the mire and struggle to breathe. Her lungs ached by the time the mask of ooze over her face was thin enough for air to permeate; she paused her swim for freedom until she no longer felt like drowning, then pried herself into something like a seated position. Her long, wavy blonde hair was now saturated with ooze, and unlike Entrapta, it couldn't support its own weight; it was like trying to tug a cape free.

She blinked away slime when she cleared the surface. Her thoughts were cloudy and frenzied. She was terrified, but her heartbeat was slowing. She needed, absolutely needed to get free of this place, and more and more she found the prospect of leaving unnecessary.

No, no, no. Black magic. This stuff is redolent with black magic. Get ahold of yourself, princess!

"Get--a--hold--" She stood up, pulling out of the ocean of slime with a tremendous glopping sound, and the first wave of slime pouring from the bifurcated jaws of the python skull splashed over her head.

From the sidelines, Entrapta, Scorpia, and especially Shadow Weaver watched Perfuma's endeavor to escape the Slime Pit ver. 3.0. Weaver held her Terror Claws out, fingers splayed, ready to barrage the princess with magic should she get too much of a headway.

"Secondhand slime does not drain magic fast enough for my liking," she said. "Of course, I have a plan."

"You would, mighty goddess," Entrapta said, lying on Abigail. It had both slime cannons aimed at Perfuma--again, just in case. "I bet we're in the clear anyway!"

"Jeez, that chick just does not give up," Scorpia said. She hadn't bothered snipping the vines off yet; she just crawled to the banks of the Slime Pit and watched the fireworks.

Even trapped in a never-ending waterfall of slime, Perfuma was still casting spells, trying to bind the jaws of the skull shut, trying to build a shield of vines or roots to catch the falling slime, creating fast-growing plants to pick her up and free of the ensorcelled flow... and Shadow Weaver snipped them away, one by one.

Perfuma refused to fall, and refused to fall, and refused to fall.

Though it took the better part of five minutes--four more than it took to convert Catra--in time, she fell.

The serpent's jaws slammed shut, and the last strings of ooze trickled over a little green hill in the Slime Pit.

Shadow Weaver stood on the bank of the pit, the toe of her boot hanging out over the void. "Perfuma, princess of Plumeria, if you are capable, pledge your will to me."

The mound in the slime stirred.

"Pledge your will to me, princess..."

The moment of truth.

"I am Shadow Weaver, your new and only god. Praise me."

The mound shifted. Perfuma stood upright, mouth just barely open. "This dress..." she said. "It's... it's just... too... tight."

Vines, blackened as if by fire, rose from the pit, slick with slime; they wound into her dress and shredded it, shedding a bulk of slime along with it. The vines entwined her arms, gently lifted under her thigh, and raised her out of the pit. Her arousal was more obvious than Entrapta and Scorpia's, her erection jutting from her lap as excess ooze dripped away.

She ran her fingers through her hair, blooming foxglove and morning glories in the slimy nest of its drowned blonde waves. "I'm terribly sorry for the trouble, Shadow Weaver. I was ignorant then. Oh, so ignorant..." She cooed. "To think I thought you were just a fallen sorceress who kidnapped a dear friend..."

Entrapta blinked. "A dear friend...?"

Perfuma opened her eyes; they may have been blood-colored, but they sparkled with an upsettingly honest love. "Yes! I missed you so much! I've felt terrible about how our last moments together were so hostile a--"

"Hup!" Scorpia said, hefting another barrel's worth of slime onto Perfuma.

"Hey!" Entrapta said. "We were--"

Scorpia hopped onto Abigail, picked up Entrapta, and flung her into the Slime Pit before she could protest. Shadow Weaver shot the slime with an extra dose of influencing sorcery.

The two girls rose from the ooze, cackling madly and definitely not hugging or looking each other in the eye.

"Ahahaha!" Perfuma said, "I'm super going to do the evil mage thing!"

"Muwahahahaha!" Entrapta said, "And I'm... science.. bad... happen!"

"There you go," Scorpia said, dusting off her claws ineffectively. "That'll nip all that 'emotion' garbage in the bud. Ain't it right, mighty goddess?"

"Yes, Scorpia," Shadow Weaver said, stroking her mask with the flat of a Terror Claw. "You're my most loyal and useful slave."

"I aim to please and I please where I aim."

"You do. You do..." She held out her claws over the pit. "Entrapta. Perfuma. Listen carefully."

* * *

_"Welcome to your new point of view_

_We have disappeared into you."_

\--ibid.

 


	6. Dark Tide

"Struggling makes it worse."

\--Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, "[Great Molasses Disaster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZnxuPatgH0)"

* * *

 

The Plumerian jungle radiated heat and an earthen, verdant scent, even flying yards above the treeline. The team had decided to head to the capitol first just in case Perfuma settled whatever it was while they were in transit. If she hadn't, then they could at least gather some information before scouring the jungle for the princess.

"It's a brutal winter night," Swiftwind said, "the snow like... like..."

"Razor confetti?" Bow said.

"Razor confetti, thank you, Bow. The scent of blood rises from the jungle below and all I can think is--"

"Why's it snowing over the jungle?" Glimmer said. "I mean, is it like some Runestone stuff?"

"Hm! Come to think of it, yes, it is because of an out-of-control Runestone," Swifty said.

"Sorry if that sounded rude, just, you know." Glimmer gestured at the rainforest below. "One, it's mid-spring, two... do you gotta write your novel while we're maybe saving Perfuma?"

"It calms my nerves!"

"It's calming my nerves, too," Adora said, stroking Swiftwind's mane.

"Aw, thanks, Ado--"

A ways ahead of them, a plume of colorful warning-smoke rose from the village of the Heart Blossom.

"--ooh, that's not a good sign," Swiftwind said.

"No siree," Adora said, drawing the Sword of Protection.

"Hold on tight!" Swifty said, tucking back his wings and soaring down to the earth at bewildering speed. He flared his wings just in time to brake, galloping to a stop at the edge of the village. Adora leapt off Swiftwind's back, sticking a three-point landing with her sword poised at the ready; Glimmer teleported next to her, guard raised in anticipation of a surprise attack; and Bow nearly tripped, prompting Swiftie to sit in the dirt so Bow wouldn't have far to fall or climb.

"Thanks, man," Bow said, stumbling off the pegasus's back.

"No problemo," Swiftwind said, standing and flourishing his wings.

The village was overrun by magical plant growth, massive vines dripping with green slime. The vines wrapped around buildings and surged after fleeing villagers, budding off predatory plants filled with more of the green stuff to snap at and trap them. The guards--a new addition after Plumeria joined the Rebellion--fought back as best they could with sickles and spears but were having a rough time of it.

"Swiftwind, Glimmer," Adora said, "get the civilians out of here. Bow, you and me are cutting these weeds down to size."

"Roger!" Glimmer said.

"On it!" Swiftwind said.

"Ready!" Bow said, taking aim with a tiny chaninsaw arrow.

" _For the honor of Grayskull_!" Adora said, and the world ground to a halt as the energies of Grayskull enveloped her and made her more. There was that beautiful disconnect, the process of taking her truest form, adorning herself with the raiments of power, the Sword of Protection growing in proportion with her new glory--and the change was done and no time had passed but the vine-mass had ceased in its attack, its myriad heads and points turned to face her.

She took her armament in both hands and charged, clearing the distance between herself and the first bundle of vines in three steps. She sliced through with no real effort; Glimmer apported and caught an old man falling from the vines' grasp. Bow's chain-arrow embedded in a flexible tentacle-plant covered in slime-dewed hairs that reached for Glimmer's foot; it thrashed away from her, trying to dash the arrow out. Swifty trotted up and took the terrified and sticky old man onto his back. "There, there," he said. "Mr. Grabhands is in Flower Hell now."

Adora dashed along the vines, ready to slice the next-most-pressing target. A pair of town guards were hacking at a dangling pitcher plant, one pinning it with the hook end of the head, the other trying to cut it open. The vines cradling the trap moved out of their weapons' reach; She-Ra leaped over the guards, charging in mid-air with a burst of energy below her feet and cleaving the pitcher free. It was low to the ground; the guards arrested its fall and sliced it open, letting several slowly-moving Plumerians stumble free.

"What happened here?" She-Ra said, taking aim and blasting away to buy time while getting intel.

"The princess left for the jungle early this morning!" one of the guards said as he helped a woman to her feet. "She hasn't come back and now all these plants are attacking and, uh, well, we're a little nervous!"

"So am I. What's your plan?"

"I... think we'll help evacuate!" the guard said, putting a boy too weak to stand on his back.

"Good luck," Adora said, and twirled the Sword of Protection as she selected her next target.

"Yo!" Bow said as he ran for her, "Double jump me!"

Adora kneeled and held out one hand; Bow hopped onto her palm and she flung him through the air and onto the thatched roof of a nearby hut. He loosed three grenade arrows in his flight, shrapnel blasting vines strangling three of the buildings. Adora hacked apart the plants advancing up Bow's firing platform; five separate heads snapped at her, flecking her with the emerald gunk dripping from them.

The stuff felt gross, but she didn't feel the other effect. Not yet.

She fought off two easily, but one got a good grip around her waist, picking her up and flinging her before she could chop herself free with careful glancing strikes; Bow took up the slack, firing an incendiary where the surviving vines knotted together for defense. The resulting fire was strangled out by the slime coating and gave off a particularly vile smoke as the stuff boiled off, but the vines were cooked to death without catching on eminently-spreadable fire. So, best of both worlds!

She-Ra stopped her tumble and righted herself with one plunge of her sword into the firm earth; she took to her feet and ran for the next captured building.

Saving Plumeria's capitol was quick, methodical work, sweeping building by building, sending the captives back to Glimmer and Swiftwind and the guards to escort to safe places in the jungle. The vines raised a hell of a fight but all they got out of it was dotting She-Ra with mucous.

It was more tiring work than she anticipated. Must be the nerves.

Bow followed her, hopping from rooftop to rooftop (or rooftop to She-Ra-palm to rooftop) and taking shots and retrieving arrows when he could. "I'm running a little low here, She-Ra," he shouted as he retrieved a chain arrow from the interior of a glop-filled flytrap head. "And I'm _really_ tuckering out. Is that weird?" He flicked slime from his hand and arrow.

"I don't... wait..." Adora chewed the thought a bit. "Maybe it is. Oh, hey, it doesn't look like it'll be a problem anyway..."

They'd cleared all the village save for their last stop--the Heart Blossom. The Blossom had been overwhelmed with dripping vines that caressed the artifact with a certain unclean fascination, though the Runestone seemed safe enough. What seemed rather more ominous was the enormous unbloomed iris that rose from the tangle enveloping the Runestone. The green muck trickled from between its folded indigo petals.

"Think that's the boss?" Bow said, aiming the chain arrow.

"I'm willing to bet," Adora said, aiming her sword in preparation for a blast. But first, a little translation magic and an ultimatum: "If you are sentient and uninterested in further damage to your plant growth, I am willing to negotiate a surrender. Be warned: further harm to the people of Plumeria will not be tolerated!"

The bulb writhed... and made a familiar giggle. "Oh, mighty She-Ra, don't you worry. There's no harm coming to anybody. They are my people, after all~"

Adora blinked. "Perfuma?"

The iris bloomed, and inside its petals was... well, it was either Perfuma or someone else tall and lanky who could mimic her voice spot-on. Her eyes were shimmering red, her easygoing smile too wide and manic. "Yes, I am Perfuma! I am so happy and _sexual_ and I'm doing _ama_ \--"

"Hang on," Bow said, covering his eyes, "I'm gonna need you to walk back from that second thing you mentioned being?"

"...Why?" Perfuma said, hurt.

"'Cause you look super gross and you're acting really weird and I don't wanna, like, invite these thoughts into my Mind Palace?"

"Oh, Bow, I'm hurt..." Perfuma said, bringing her iris closer--and Adora fired a blast at the base of Perfuma's plant throne. The beam sliced through the stem of the iris, but a cluster of vines armored with thick bark caught Perfuma's throne before it could fall more than a few feet. "She-Ra, that was mean!"

"I don't know what happened to you, Perfuma," Adora said, pacing around Perfuma's iris, "but we're gonna help you out."

"There's nothing to help!" Perfuma said. "I've been enlightened. And soon so shall you--"

"-- _kick!_ " said Glimmer, appearing outta nowhere and kicking Perfuma in the face.

"fpuh" said Perfuma.

Glimmer sailed past her and directly into the grasp of a dewed flower, squeezing tight around her. "Agh, it got me--" She teleported out, landing awkwardly on her feet and stumbling away, brushing at the blots of goo smeared across herself. The slime pulsed with indigo light. "--ahh, crap! It's draining my mana, I can feel it!" She scooped goo off and threw it off, stumbling away from two more of the predatory vines.

"Duck!" Bow said, and Glimmer hit the dirt, rolling away as he fired a defoliant arrow that burst into acrid powder in the midst of the plants, withering them away.

Perfuma retreated into the iris. The Heart Blossom flared with light as a small forest of carnivorous, slime-dripping plants growed from the vines; twisted trees grew to envelop her throne.

She-Ra bounded over the tangle of plants; several flytrap heads opened in the path of her jump, and she sliced through them, hopping from the lower jaw-leaf of each plant as she hacked free. Her last jump turned into a slip on a puddle of glop, one she didn't quite recover from in time to escape getting drawn into the vine tangle at the base of Perfuma's monstrous creation. The vines constricted her, but with effort she burst through them, one knot at a time, swimming for the surface. She could see daylight breaking through the swirling vines when she realized it was difficult to move her sword-hand. She was thoroughly soaked with the green stuff smeared on the vines; she had to blink it out of her vision more than once.

"Little help?" Adora shouted.

A moment later Glimmer's hand thrust into a gap left by the vines; Adora grabbed her, and Glimmer teleported her out and to safety.

Adora took a deep breath, wiping filth from her brow. Bow was scrambling across the rooftops away from encroaching vines, laying them out with explosive and flame arrows, but he was already running low.

"This... is bad," Adora said.

"No shit," Glimmer said, panting. "I'd even take fighting Frosta over fighting Perfuma."

"Message the rest of the princesses," Adora said, standing up. "I have a plan."

"A good plan?"

"It's the worst. But it'll buy time."

"Just so you know, I've got veto power if it's really stupid..."

"I trust you do." She planted the Sword of Protection in the ground and resumed her mundane shape. She felt better immediately; the slime evaporated with She-Ra's dismissal. "You know what? I'm feeling more confident already!"

"...wait..." Glimmer said, hefting the fifteen-pound Sword of Protection over her shoulder. "This is already looking--dammit, Adora!" She teleported out, grabbed Bow, and teleported them both out to a hiding place behind the Heart Blossom's tree.

"Perfuma!" Adora shouted. "I have a proposal!"

A fist-sized flytrap grew from one of the vines. "I'm listening~" it said in Perfuma's voice.

"You said you found someone in the jungle, right? Take me to them. We'll have a talk. I'll hear them out. I promise." She put her hands up. "Leave the village alone and I'll go quietly."

"Will your friends let us go, Adora?"

"They'd better!" Adora said.

"Damn it, Adora," muttered Glimmer. Just behind her, Bow furiously group-texted.

"Alright. For the time being, you're mine, Adora." A bigger flytrap opened wide, full of ooze.

"No slime, okay?" Adora said, taking a subconscious step back.

"Nah," Perfuma said, and the flytrap snapped shut around her.

"...damn it, Adora," Adora said, squirming around 'til she was in a relatively slimeless patch of giant plant. At least it wasn't leaking acid. At least it wasn't leaking acid _right now_.

Boy, this was a bad idea.

The little forest died and rotted to a puddle of protoplasm flooding the earth before the Heart Blossom. Perfuma's throne and the captive Adora sped away on a vine chariot.

Bow stepped out from behind the Heart Blossom tree and toed the protoplasm puddle. "Well, that sucked," he said.

"Once we get the other guys, we're in the clear," Glimmer said. "Guh... those freaking whattaya-call-em plants ate a lot of my magic. And I feel extremely gross. And Adora let herself get freaking _kidnapped!_ " She stomped the protoplasm puddle. "Alright... alright. Deep breaths..."

Swiftwind landed well away from the protoplasm puddle and trotted up. "Well, the nice people of whatever this place is called are secured in some kind of cavern system nearby. They have plenty of tasty cave algae to eat, so they say, so they should be fine until we settle this whole sad incident." He sniffed the air. "Is it me or does Adora feel really kidnapped and sticky?"

"Swifty," Glimmer said, "you're not gonna like learning what she did."

* * *

After a long, silent, uncomfortable ride, the flytrap slid open and drooled Adora onto the ground. "Euggh," she said, wringing out her ponytail. She felt like the early days of going on forced marches during her Hordesman training.

A shadow fell over her. "Adora..."

She looked up.

It had been a long time since last she'd seen her adoptive mother. It took a moment for all the changes in Shadow Weaver's appearance to sink in: the missing crystal on her mask, her hair hanging limp like when she was recharging, and the gigantic claws she wore. From the ground, looking up, an instinctive revulsion twisted her stomach, memories of being a child under her thumb. "Shadow Weaver," she said through grit teeth.

"Haven't you missed me, child?" Weaver said, reaching to touch Adora's face with one of her talons. Adora held still, the razor-sharp claw pressing against her cheek, the point perilously close to drawing blood. "I've missed you. I miss you as though you were my own."

"I thought you were dead," Adora said. "So I have to un-check something on my to-do list."

Weaver lay the back of her palm on Adora's head... or that was the plan. The moment the blade left Adora's cheek she punched Weaver in her kneecap with a distressingly satisfying _crunch_. Weaver stumbled, then fell on her ass, and Adora sprang to her feet and realized where she was.

A clearing in the jungle. Some stony, skull-headed edifice. Behind her, Perfuma half-emerged from her petal throne, aiming at her--

She juked to the left. She felt a burst of magic travel past her, hot and stinging, and at the end of a line drawn where her eyes had been a wreathe of poison ivy grew unbidden. She bolted, going for cover, when Scorpia stepped into view.

Scorpia was caked with slime, though much less than Perfuma; it discolored her but she could make out the finer details of her outfit and an uncharacteristically somber expression. Scorpia lunged for her; she tucked and rolled between her massive thighs, reaching up to grab the base of her tail before she could swing it. That wasn't a great idea; Scorpia swung her hips and lashed her tail to dislodge her. She held on, trying to shift her grip to keep the stinger away from her, but the slime coating her tail slowly weakened her grip 'til she flew off.

She stuck the landing and ran towards the stone monument for cover, dodging conjurations of black rosebushes. She realized that Perfuma was going easy on her and realized why when Entrapta emerged from a pit in front of the monument.

Grace left her and the immenent threat to her life seemed suddenly quite distant. "En--Entrapta?!!"

Entrapta was glistening with a fresh coat of green fluid; the giant prehensile ponytails and too-familiar eyes gave her away. Her eyes had the same glow as Perfuma and Scorpia's, and her expression was one of mirthless disdain.

There was no attack. Entrapta slouched from the pit towards Adora and the Hordesmen and captured friend just watched.

"Entrapta... what have they done to you?" Adora said. She blinked and hot tears stung her cheeks.

"You too, huh..." Entrapta said. "Weird, isn't it? Why are you just missin' me now, huh? Instead'a when... when you coulda... the thing..."

"We thought you were dead," Adora said.

"Yeah... heard that one too." She looked away from Adora, and Shadow Weaver's hex struck Adora in the back.

Pain overwhelmed her senses and she fell to her knees, shouting a long string of curses as she tried to will her nerve endings to shut off.

"Pathetic," Shadow Weaver said. Scorpia helped her to her good leg. Indigo light shone through her long skirt near her busted knee; Adora must've done more damage than she felt she'd done. "You've gone soft in their care, Adora."

"And you're... still... a heartless... bitch," Adora said, crawling away from Entrapta.

"Guilty as charged." She nodded her head at Perfuma; Perfuma made a rising gesture and a bundle of vines lifted Adora off the ground, securing her wrists and ankles. "Your princess friend Glimmer has tasty magic. I look forward to draining her entirely before I throw her in the Slime Pit."

"That's what you've done to them, isn't it?" Adora said. "Thrown them in that hole and... covered them in some evil sludge. Taken over their minds."

"Taken... far from it," Shadow Weaver said, shambling towards Adora. Scorpia stood just behind her, ready to catch her if she fell. "Shown them the right way to think. Reminded them of their purpose. I've even... ha... I've even finally taught that idiot pet of yours to behave."

Adora narrowed her eyes. "You didn't fucking dare..."

"Langauge. Entrapta, if you please."

Entrapta pulled out a barrel with air holes drilled in its top. She popped the lid off and tilted the drum; it fell on its side, a flood of ooze pouring out with a fairly large lump in its middle. Shadow Weaver shot it through with another burst of magic, and the lump moved.

The tail might have given her identity away; the all-fours pacing, glistening black claws popping from her fingers and toes, her ears sagging under the weight of slime. But it was the eyes that did it for Adora. Catra's eyes, once two distinct colors, now a uniform glowing red. She met Adora's gaze and snarled as she paced around her.

"You monster," Adora said.

"You should've called it that a long time ago," Shadow Weaver said, clicking her Terror Claws. "Instead of putting up with its every act of disobedience, encouraging her to think for herself... you could've helped me raise a loyal servitor. Instead you spoiled it. And corrective action had to be taken."

"What you've done to them..." Adora said, "You'll pay for this. This won't stand."

"Adora... sweet Adora." Shadow Weaver was almost in touching range now. "I would wipe your precious head clean of all those awful memories you've made. But now you've learned too much; meant too much to those whores of the Morning Star. I would return you to the loving child I raised, but for the value of all that intel in your head."

"I'll never give in," Adora said.

"Catra," Shadow Weaver said, "what do you have to say to that?"

"Adora," Catra said. "You should bite your tongue out and drown in your own blood."

Shadow Weaver nodded at Scorpia; she walked to Catra and kicked her in the side at full strength. The magickat flinched, but said nothing else.

"Do it," Shadow Weaver said.

Entrapta wrapped her ponytails around Adora, and Perfuma withdrew her vines. Entrapta stepped to the edge of the Slime Pit and hurled Adora in.

Adora grabbed her ponytail's edge and swung to the edge of the pit; Entrapta responded by not struggling, and both of them fell into the ooze. Adora wrapped her arms around her friend and swam for the surface, gasping for breath as she powered toward the shore.

Perfuma's vines seized her by the waist and dragged her towards the rear of the pit. Entrapta limply climbed out, watching Adora futiley swim against the vines' pull. Adora kept her mouth shut, breathed through her nose, and mostly kept her eyes shut. She knew the back of the pit meant business, and she wanted no part of it. Her hair was plastered to her head; the slime here did not feel draining, but bracing, like a splash of ice water to the face.

Thoughts bubbled to the front of her mind: _You should've just turned the Sword of Protection over to Shadow Weaver. It would've been so easy. This would've all been so easy. And you would have gotten such better sleep._

And everyone she had ever met for the past two years of her life would be dead or enslaved. So fuck that.

_They're all dumb animals that deserve to die alone and in pain, like Catra. You're a dumb animal, too. A lowly primate playing I'm Real with a sword of ylem and tok'l-metal. Pretender to a divided throne. Stolen child, cat-fucker, cambion-fucker, why do you resist the becoming?_

"Fuck you," Adora said.

The vines pulled taut, half-pulling Adora from the pit, positioning her just under the snake head. She had a feeling what was about to happen. In the last moments before the process began, she looked up at the shores of the pit.

Everyone present gathered to watch. Entrapta, dangling her feet over the pit, looking on half-lidded and despairing. Scorpia, stoic, but a little too interested. Her hips were shimmying. Perfuma... she looked away from what Perfuma was doing. Shadow Weaver, face hidden by her mask, chanting a curse powered by her Terror Claws. And Catra.

Catra, still on all fours, staring at her with sheer loathing, the kind she reserved for She-Ra in the most clutch of situations, the most dire or narrowest losses. An expression she'd never directed at Adora, not even...

Not even when Catra had left her to die.

"Wake up," Adora said, softly.

Catra dug her claws into the lip of the pit.

"Please... wake up..."

The skull groaned as it tilted forward, and the slime flowed. Adora closed her eyes, held her breath, and trusted that Glimmer knew what she was doing.

* * *

"..."

\--Ghost, "[Miasma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX335Z4esSU)"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read about the showrunners' debate on if Catra had fur or skin, and I realized this may have some unexpected relevance to this fanfic. I've went ahead and started a poll just in case you feel like your time is spent voting on if Catra is smooth or fuzzy: https://linkto.run/p/RWWAM5K7 When such information becomes relevant I'll abide by the poll's results.


	7. A Little Late

"I know I said that I would be around--"

\--Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, "[A Little Late](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGufB85VbOE)"

* * *

 

Swiftwind flew in a wide, high loop above the clearing where the Evil Horde were up to some dastardly nonsense. "Tell me what your electric eyes see, Bow!" the magic flying talking horned horse did say.

"Just a sec, these--" Bow grunted as he tried to turn the zoom dial on the electrobionculars more gently. "The auto-zoom on these doesn't work for crap."

Glimmer gnawed her lip as she held tight to Swiftwind. "Little faster, maybe?"

"Working on... there. Freaking finally." He pressed the binoculars to his eyes and took a survey of the clearing. "Let's see here..." he said. "Okay, warning one, that's definitely Shadow Weaver down there, plus some green globs that I can only presume are Scorpia and Catra... plus Perfuma in that flower car... plus some glob sitting near that statue thingey."

"Shadow Weaver's down there? I thought she was dead."

"If only we were that lucky. They're all around that statue thingey, by the way, and... oh." He lowered the electrobinoculars. "Alright... either Adora pulled an amazing last-minute escape, or she's the wriggling thing in the hole where they're dumping toxic waste."

"Mind control slime, called it," Swiftwind said, grimly.

"If it's mind control slime, why does it just make you tired when--whatever!" Glimmer said. "I'm gonna save her."

"Wait!" Bow said. "I hate to slow your roll but, uh, you do have a plan, right?"

"Yeah!" Glimmer said, standing on Swifty's back like she had good sense; one hand was clenched tight on his mane. "Like... sixty, seventy percent of a plan."

"What makes up the forty-thirty?"

"I'm making a bold assumption that Adora turning into She-Ra will start fixing everything. Everything else, I got it down. The jump, the teleportation timing, all that. I been practicing."

"And what's the worst case scenario for this plan? Just so my old bones are ready for it?"

"Whatever happened to Perfuma happens to Adora, except she's She-Ra when it happens, and we all die unimaginably horrible deaths."

"Even me?" Swiftwind said. "I'm her horse. I don't think even Evil Adora could hurt a horse."

"Yeah, and Perfuma needs ten minutes of breathing exercises before she gets into a fighting mood," Glimmer said. She balanced the Sword of Protection against her shoulder and prepared a spell for the ride down. "Alright. Just need to psych myself up."

"You got this!" Swiftwind said. "Just jump off, teleport like so... oh, was Adora tied up in the hole?"

"I think so," Bow said, taking another look. "She's still struggling! And she's got vines on her wrists, I think."

"Cool. So, Glimmer, don't forget that her hands are bound so she might not be able to reach it unless you throw her sword, like, right at her hand. And remember to compensate for it hitting the gunk the statue's gleeting onto her."

"'Gleet?'" Bow said.

"Well, that's the sound effect I'm imagining."

"Ten... nine..." Glimmer said. Her heart hammered in her chest. "...Fuck it." She jumped.

* * *

Adora held her breath for the first two minutes of the slime pouring over her. It was unnecessary in the first few seconds as the slime sluiced down the sides of her head, but it soon flowed over her face. Soon, though, the need to keep conscious overtook the desire to fall into darkness and surrender herself to fate. She didn't muster enough force to blow the slime off her mouth; that was when she found, to her revulsion, she could breathe through the mess, its chemical smell and taste overwhelming her senses.

She wished she could just drown.

The stuff itself was unimaginably filthy; it had draped her completely in moments and as the process wore on it seemed to fin new places to seep and soak. It felt like it was trying to seep into her through her pores. She felt heavy and unclean and lost, and the voice in her head was getting louder and more insistent.

_Give up, you dumb animal._

Fuck off. I am Adora, chosen to be She-Ra, Princess of Power.

_Just stop and let it happen. This is the fate of all who are trapped in the Slime Pit._

Fuck that. Not today. Not to me.

_Idiot child. You should've listened to her. You could be the right hand of the future. Hordak, Imp, and Horde Prime for your sponsors; the universe itself your charge, your dominion, your plaything. Were you not raised better than this?_

Fuck this. I was a vic... I was a survivor. I was not raised. I was tortured. My Ca--my best friend, Catra, she lived in fear for her life.

_Those liars bind your eyes shut. Their slovenly rebellion seeks to throw down order in favor of foul chaos. Entropy is their name and you will rot with them. The Horde is the only way to have a future at all._

Fuck 'em. I didn't feel the noose around my neck until I saw people live without one. I'm never going back. I'd rather die than let them take me.

_You needn't die, and you won't be taken. You will rejoin us, and you will be happy. And Shadow Weaver will be happy._

Adora clenched her fists 'til she felt her nails dig into her wrist, a sensation sharper than the numbing vileness of the slime.  A coping mechanism she learned from the most important woman in her life.

Fuck her, and fuck you, she thought.

* * *

Entrapta sat on the ridge of the Slime Pit mark 3, watching Adora flex and strain against Perfuma's vines as the slime flowed over her. She sighed, resting her head in her hands. "You know, this was pretty exciting the last three times. Why is this sad?"

"She was a great soldier," Scorpia said, saluting. "She's comin' home at last. No matter how dead sexy she looks, no matter how scrumptious that horny blonde is gonna be once she crawls out--"

"Am I scrumptiously blonde?" Perfuma said, mid-stroke.

"Why, come to think of it, I would qualify you as perkily blonde," Scorpia said, clenching her thighs tight for stimulation. "Now that you've seen the light of the Horde it's so easy to see your infectious charm at its--"

"Silence," Shadow Weaver said.

"Yes'm," Scorpia said.

Perfuma whimpered an inaudible apology.

Catra sat right on the edge of the pit like a melting gargoyle, scarcely blinking; when she did it was slowly, as if daring Adora to pull some last-second rescue. Not that Adora could see her through that cascading mucous. What an idiot cat.

Adora roared, a noise that pierced through the slime. Princesses and their desire to maintain their pride. Shadow Weaver had half a mind to--

There was a rising note and a burst of light and that hideous pink-and-purple cambion appeared--parallel to the ground, the kinetic energy of a long fall rocketing her past the assembled Hordesmen.

She shouted something, but exactly what Shadow Weaver missed in favor of being blinded by the spell she unleashed.

* * *

"FLASHBANG!" said Glimmer, and let the gathered light energy burst in a fan ahead of her.

Judging by the screams, she got everybody, at least a little, and before she plunged headfirst into a tree she teleported perpendicular to the ground, flying into the air until gravity pulled her to a stop. One last teleport and she was securely on the ground by the big snake-skull-on-stone-wall statue, near where Perfuma's vines were growing.

Not far away, Shadow Weaver stumbled away from the infernal trap; Perfuma had nearly avoided it, but her flower car was drooping to the ground, and her angry glare at Glimmer was unfocused. Scorpia maintained her position, standing shock-still like a statue and seemingly trying to will her eyes to stop dilating. Catra had avoided it entirely, covering her eyes and continuing to cover her eyes. The one with the fresh coat who sat at the edge seemed totally unharmed, the one with the dark gog...

Process that later, Glimmer.

Smirking, she smashed the Sword of Protection's blade against one holding Adora's hand in place. "Adora!" she said. "Can you hear me?!"

Adora turned to face her, that much she could make out. She held out her hand, straining against the other vines and the sheer pouring weight of the slime.

Glimmer held her breath and flung the Sword of Protection. The blade hit the slime well above Adora, stuck in the dense pour, and landed neatly in her hand as gravity did the job of taking it towards Adora's hand.

And then the robot sprayed the living hell out of her with mana-stealing goop, broadsiding her entire right half with two firehose-like streams of muck. She teleported away, but the sudden shock and drain meant it was less a jump and more a hop. The drone closed in on her, spraying her up and down 'til she collapsed to the jungle floor, her mana drained to nothing. "Dammit..." she gurgled, spitting glop from her lips.

"Good job, Abigail!" the goggles slime-pit-victim said, approaching Glimmer on a pair of... big... stepping... members... growing from the side of her head?

"Entrapta?!" Glimmer said, the shock overwhelming the disgust and helplessness.

"Yeah, yeah, you thought I was dead," Entrapta sighed. "Tell me something I don't know, like, oh, that you loved me and that I'm missed and... all that... junky... crap... shit."

"Whatever Shadow Weaver's done to--" Glimmer said before Entrapta's drone filled her mouth with slime. Oh, there's the disgust again. She coughed and gagged, seeing stars from the force of it.

A broken, dying tree grew up from under Glimmer, keeping her well-cocooned form tangled in its branches.

"Thanks, babe," Entrapta said, holding out a hair-fist for a bump. Perfuma reciprocated with a high five. "Close enough."

"Is this display done with?" Shadow Weaver said, Scorpia helping her to her feet--in that she stood nearby while Shadow Weaver cast a stand-without-effort spell, because the last time she attempted to do something involving touching Shadow Weaver the mighty red goddess had electrocuted her. Or, whatever electrocution done with shadow magic counted as. "The damnable pixie's in her bell jar, I can feel her mana filling my Claws!"

"Yes, O crimson flame!" Entrapta said, climbing up the dead tree and cuddling up with Glimmer, who just now realized that Entrapta was naked and was now wondering how many princess genitals she was going to see the rest of the day. "And it looks like whatever stupid thing she was doing with Adora didn't wo--"

* * *

When she touched the Sword of Protection's grip, the voices in her head shrieked.

 _EVIL._  
_WRONG._  
_WICKED._  
_UNHOLY THING._  
_MORE REAL THAN YOU._  
_DROP IT._  
_SURRENDER--_

She had to breathe. She had to think. The voice was less like her own; it was more like Shadow Weaver's all the time, calculating and measured and silky, save when she lost control... like now. When she was out of control, even by a little, her voice turned into an ear-punishing shriek. This was the voice of your childhood, she thought, the voice of authority and--

Okay, yeah, sure. Unpack it later with your therapist, you've spent enough time trying to stuff the voice back down.

Take a deep breath, Adora.

And speak the words like you fucking mean it.

* * *

"FOR THE HONOR OF GRAYSKULL!"

There was an explosion of slime from the pit, raining over everybody present, even Shadow Weaver, who rushed to cover herself with a magic shield; still some of it splattered in her hair and across her mask. She hissed in pain as if she'd been splashed with boiling oil.

Entrapta caught raining slime on her tongue. "Ahh," she said, swallowing it. "You know, the taste really grows on--"

The She-Ra landed on the edge of the pit. Her trunk-like legs were soaked to her knees; a veil of slime hung over her hair and cape. Her eyes were still blue, and the Sword of Protection was immaculate in her white-knuckled fist.

The white knuckles were important, as were her furrowed brows, her curling lip, the anticipatory tremor in her jaw...

"Stop her, gods take you!" Shadow Weaver said, scraping her Terror Claws together as she wove the most vicious debilitation spell she could think of.

She-Ra raised her sword and fired a blast at Shadow Weaver; Scorpia jumped to take the hit, locking her knees and refusing to get pushed back by the force. As She-Ra stepped forward, punishing Scorpia for her persistence with the steady low-voltage concussion beam, Perfuma shouted an invocation. To Adora's intense surprise, thorned briar vines began to grow inside her lungs.

That made her less inclined towards shooting Scorpia; she dropped the beam and coughed and hacked luminous ichor into her hand.

"Don't kill her, idiot witch!" Shadow Weaver said.

"Oh! Right! Sorry!" Perfuma uttered the spell's termination word. Adora gasped for breath.

"I mean, she was just--" Scorpia said, and Weaver interrupted her spell to clout her on the back of her head with the blunt backs of her talons. "Ow."

Perfuma gestured grandly and She-Ra leaped well over the groping tree roots that clutched for her legs; she sailed overhead, slicing away at conjured pine cones bursting into shrapnel like hand grenades. She landed on her feet well away from the Slime Pit; she transformed the Sword into a shield as Abigail fired her mana-draining slime at Adora.

"Come on!" Entrapta said, vaulting over to She-Ra, "You've had a hard day. You could use _a hug!_ "

She felt a hard impact on her back, like someone had slapped a dinner plate onto her. A small, heavy dinner plate that yanked her away and to the side of the Slime Pit Mark 3, against another heavy dinner--oh, it was a magnet. Magnets?! And was that an arrowhead in the grass--oh, dammit.

Swiftwind whinneyed and flew through the Hordesmen, forcing Perfuma down as his wing came within inches of her head; Scorpia again stood in front of Shadow Weaver in spite of her being far away enough to resist; and Bow hopped off his back and fired a sonic stun arrow at Scorpia.

Shadow Weaver slashed the arrow apart with a spell. "Disable the archer!" she said.

"Gonna have to--oh!" Bow said as a giant flytrap grew under his feet, lifting him into the air. Its jaws fell open; he performed a painful-looking split trying to keep them from shutting. "Okay, let's not!" he said, firing off two more stun arrows at Perfuma.

Perfuma squeaked and withdrew into her iris; the arrows burst harmlessly to either side of her.

"Almost--" Bow said, and the flytrap successfully closed around him, smothering him in don't-feel-great juice. "Not almost. Not almost!"

Perfuma peeked out, then cheered. "He's down! Now I just have--" She turned and got a faceful of mana-drinking slime.

She-Ra had Abigail flipped upside down, arm wedged up in a hole she'd punched into her chassis; there was a quite convenient firing mechanism for the slime guns, and she gave Perfuma a good second-stage hosing 'til the tanks ran dry. She ripped the controls out of Abigail and tossed the fatally-damaged drone aside. "You're running out of weapons," She-Ra said.

"I see that," Shadow Weaver said. "And you've given me a thoughtful donation of Perfuma's mana."

"I did what?" Adora said.

Glimmer spat out the last of the slime. "Sorry! I'd have spoken up sooner, but--"

Shadow Weaver slashed the air, and an onyx net of shadows wrapped around She-Ra. The strands were razor-sharp and bit deep; black magic flowed into the mighty warrior. "Agh...!" She-Ra said, straining against the sorcery.

"Resist if you must," Shadow Weaver said, commanding the ebb and flow of the spell with elaborate gestures. "You'll tire yourself out soon enough. Then you'll return to the Slime Pit, and you will be mine again."

She glanced to her right by happenstance, and saw Catra, standing still as a stone at the edge of the Pit.

"You wretched beast!" Shadow Weaver said. "Won't you kindly prove that you're not a waste of time and flesh?"

"You want me to act, Shadow Weaver?" Catra said.

"Yes, you useless thing!"

"If you insist." She stepped towards She-Ra. It was not a run, not even a menacing stroll; simply a walk. She flexed her wrists and black talons popped from her fingertips, easily slicing through the slime covering her fingers.

She-Ra was resisting the spell admirably. Compared to the Slime Pit, a little profound physical agony was... well, she'd rather stub her toe than get speechified by Queen Angela, you know? She'd been shot, sliced, punched, had dental work done without anesthesia, and that was before she was She-Ra and added "scorched by plasma mortar" and "ate a tank's main gun" to her injury resume. She met Catra's burning gaze. "Hey, Catra," she said, smirking.

Catra said nothing.

"Rough day, huh?"

Catra said nothing.

"Don't waste your--" Shadow Weaver said.

"Boss, duck!" Scorpia said.

"What do you--" Shadow Weaver said right as Swiftwind conked her on the top of her head with his left forehoof (his favorite) on his way flying over her. She dropped the spell and to her knee, most of her weight on the knee Adora had broken. Clutch of Nygotha, today was a miserable day.

She-Ra leaped onto Swiftwind as he passed; Catra followed. "Won't be long!" she shouted.

"I believe in you!" Glimmer shouted.

"This is really freakin' gross but yeah me too!" Bow said.

Scorpia helped Shadow Weaver to her feet, much to the latter's chagrin. Blood flowed steadily from her scalp onto her face--not her mask, but the true face she hid under it.  
Glimmer managed to free one arm enough to flip Shadow Weaver the bird. "You can't win. Perfuma's out of mana, your big guns are disabled, and the princesses aren't going to let you--"

Shadow Weaver twisted her Terror Claws and the mana-draining slime sluiced from Perfuma's body, leaving her bare and free.

"Here," Shadow Weaver said. A cloud of black magic shot Perfuma through the chest. "Some of your magic back."

"Thank you, goddess," Perfuma said, bowing.

"How do you feel?" Shadow Weaver said.

"I feel... vulnerable. But at least I have you, Shadow Weaver, and the wisdom you've given me through intense personal sacrifice and a brisk bath in a gooey abyss."

"You may bathe, if you please," Shadow Weaver said. She stepped closer to Glimmer. "You, though. You're soft and weak and new... and you, oh, you are the architect of my every agony."

"And you deserve more than what you got, bitch," Glimmer said, spitting in her face.

"Ah..." Shadow Weaver said. "It would be so easy to spear you through the heart. But then, what would I have to show your mother? A corpse? ... Ah, maybe that would be fine." She waved her claw at Bow as he writhed in the flytrap's maw. "Or perhaps you want to see your devil mother again. You could volunteer his life for yours."

"Is this some kind of life trade thing?!" Bow said.

Shadow Weaver clenched her claws, and inky spears of shade appeared outside the flytrap.

"Don't--" Glimmer said.

She opened her Terror Claws and the dozen spears punctured the flytrap. Bow howled in pain. "Ahhh, fuck! Ah, fuck that hurts!"

"You fucker!" Glimmer said, struggling against her bindings.

"He's not dead yet," Shadow Weaver said. "In pain, yes. But I sincerely cannot decide which would be a more amusing thing to see: the light leave your piggy eyes as I open you up like the Books of Blood, or the light leave your piggy eyes as I carve your slut-boy like a science specimen. How many miles of blood vessels might we pull out?"

Glimmer snarled at her.

"How articulate you are. I'll decide soon, I promise. And you will enjoy it. Every last moment."

"She-Ra's out there. You let her get away."

"Did I?"

* * *

Swiftwind panted. "Hey, uh," he said, "not to be alarming, but I'm not feeling so hot. What's on me now?"

Adora looked over her shoulder. Catra sat side-saddle on Swiftwind. Dripping slime stained his regal hide.

"Welcome to the flying horse," Adora said, cautiously. "You ready for a ride?"

[Catra blinked at her, slowly.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DfArO6TMEg)

"Catra...?"

"I'm going to kill you, Adora," she said, and she was upon her; and the last thing Adora saw 'til she shed her She-Ra form were Catra's barbed thumbs in her eyes.

* * *

"If there is an afterlife

I know I may

have to say

have to say

That I'll be--"

\--Ibid.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops it just got darker


	8. The Ghost in My Heart

_"Are you ready to burn?"_

_\--_ Gunship, "[Fly For Your Life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv1ZN8c4_Gs)"

* * *

 

In the barrel, Catra had been alone with her thoughts and the Voice. The Voice was Shadow Weaver's. It had been a whisper when Entrapta had sprayed her; it was a conversational speech when Catra had been gracelessly deposited in the pit; and it rose to a scream when the first wave of slime washed over her head.

Catra scarcely realized until she lay on the cold floor that the Voice was not the voice that whispered to her every day in her unguarded moments. They said the same kinds of things at first:

 _Ugly, useless pet._  
_Sinful thing. Born wrong._  
_You should have been drowned at birth._

It was only when she was lying on the floor and listening to Shadow Bitch's commands that the Voice began to speak in earnest:

 _You can't fight worth a damn. Surrender._  
_Obey her and you will be tolerated as long as you are useful._  
_She is the One True God. All other gods are febrile imitations of Her majesty._

These she could at least disagree with.

Not that she could act on her disagreement.

She could work around them, a little. She could choose inaction, and she could be passive-aggressive; hell, it was even easier to be passive aggressive now than when she had free will. Shadow Weaver had been a master of this sort of bullshit from her days of studying magic in Mystacor, after all, and her skills had served her well in the Horde. But Catra could not willfully disobey Shadow Weaver. It's not what Shadow Weaver would do; Her writ was holy and Her will divine.

So Catra chose inaction and passive aggression. She listened for orders and processed them as literally as she could. How fortunate that Weaver was angry at Perfuma, enough to say "Don't kill her, idiot witch!" and not just those first three words.

Seated on Adora's ridiculous flying horse, she searched for a place where her and Shadow Weaver's thoughts synced up, something that would allow her the most freedom to act. There were two, in fact, and it gave her all the room she needed.

One:  
_I hate the She-Ra for stealing Adora from me._

Two:  
_I would sooner see Adora dead than diminished._

And so Catra said her goodbyes as best she could; and she was on She-Ra. When she was a child, one of her greatest thrills had been scratching Octavia on her eyeball. Eyes were fun. They were like gummy candy filled with jelly, soft, tactile, and so fun to injure.

She-Ra's eyes were resilient, but all she had to do was push past her normal physical limits; it was easy under the influence of Shadow Weaver. Arms and shoulders burning with the effort, her claws bit into She-Ra's pupils, stressing the surface 'til at last, accompanied by She-Ra's hideous screaming, she plunged her thumbs deep into Adora's eye sockets. Luminous humours flowed down her wrist.

* * *

She-Ra was used to all sorts of pain.

Being blinded?  This was new.

Alarms sounded in her head, audible despite being lower than her own screaming resounding in her ears. Emergency notes flashed across her vision and she had no time to read them while feeling Catra's claws scratching inside her eye sockets, clawing away the wall of bone at the back, the better to punch a hole into her brain--

So all she had to do was thrust the Sword of Protection into Catra's side through the ribs and puncture her heart and lungs and throw her off and that would be the last time she would ever have to think of her other than every time she went to sleep knowing that she had--

She smacked her in the elbow with the Sword of Protection's flat. Catra made a small sound and She-Ra seized her other arm and pulled her hand out of the socket and flung her out to the side--not off, she held tight... to a slippery, slime-caked wrist, with a hundred and eight pounds of squirming, angry Catra hanging off it.

And she was blind.

"Adora, you're blind?!" Swiftwind said.

"You can tell?" Adora said, tilting her head towards his.

"Yes, I can see a blinking red alarm thing! Hang on, let me patch you through to my eyes so you can see from my perspective!"

"You can do that?!" Adora said, finally planting her boot in Catra's belly as she tried to climb up Adora's arm.

After a moment, Swiftwind said, "...just tried, turns out, no I can't. Sorry, wishful thinking."

She took a moment to read the words flashing where her vision used to be. "Optics offline. Adapting sensoria."

"I think I have some kind of backup sight... thing!" Adora said. "Get us to a river, or a lake, or anything with lots of water!"

"The slime just washes off?"

"I sure as fuck hope it does!" Adora said as Catra wrapped her tail around her foot and let go of her wrist. From there she swung under Swiftwind and crawled.

"Oooh man that feels really gross!" Swiftwind said. "And I'm feeling like someone's letting all the air out of my sails!"

"You better not try to kill him, Catra," Adora said, sheathing the Sword of Protection. She tried to guess where Catra might attack from and not think about how those weren't tears streaking down her cheeks.

"Come on, come on," Swiftwind said, "there's gotta be moving water around here somewhere... this is a rainforest, man. Or a jungle. Do you know if there's a difference, Adora? I feel like there should be but--port flank! Port flank!"

Adora swung her elbow behind her to try and hit Catra mid-flight, but Catra instead hopped along Swiftwind's side before tackling her from the side. She bit Adora's neck like a vampire and chewed furiously while trying to slice open her belly with her claws.

"Nnnaaaggggh..." Adora said, pinching Catra's head between her own and her shoulder. She wasn't breaking the skin but those teeth were clamping on her vein good and tight; between that and Catra's clinging and furious scratching smearing her with slime, her strength was flagging.

"Adora, keep your guard up!  I'll tell you when I see a river!"

"You--you don't see one yet?!"

"It's a thick forest!  You can do this!  I believe in you!"

Catra slipped from her grasp.  This was going to be a long ride.

* * *

Bow hung suspended from a pair of trees Perfuma bid grow at his sides, thick branches curled around his arms. He was slick with slime, dangling like a doll with uneven stuffing. His breathing was ragged and his eyes pleading after the simplest torture spell Shadow Weaver knew. This would be an easy task, then.

Glimmer thrashed in the cold, twisted branches presenting her for Shadow Weaver's amusement. Entrapta sat on her hair at the base of the tree, half-watching the almighty mistress, half watching Glimmer attempt to free herself. One of her drones was onhand to spray the princess down more if need be.

Shadow Weaver whispered an invocation and dragged her Terror Claws across Bow's slime-stained, armored chest. She drew no blood, though the boy flinched and sharply inhaled. Perfect. She dragged the back of her blades across his chest and belly 'til he made a sound that, not to be gentle about it, made her tremendously aroused.

"Please don't," Bow whimpered. "I have a very sensitive navel... and... I should not... have mentioned that." He closed his eyes and braced himself.

"You do, child?" Weaver said, and plunged her longest claw into his navel. He screamed as she probed his organs, soon waving all four of her fingers through his torso while caressing his skin with her shorter thumb blade. All bloodless, all without damage; it only felt like she was butchering him.

She curled her Terror Claws into a fist and pulled them out through his chest. He fell limp, panting and whimpering.

"Stop it!" Glimmer said, twisting her hips as she forced them against the thick branches entwined around them. "Let him go! _Let him go!_ "

"I will, princess, on one condition," Shadow Weaver said, hooking her thumb claw through Bow's cheeks and pressing the edge against his shying tongue. (The spell was still active, of course... she was pretty certain.) "Surrender to the pit and become enlightened. Or I will unbind this spell and we'll read your pretty boy's book of blood."

"Glimmer..." Bow said, though it was barely comprehensible. "Don't... it's fine."

Glimmer shut her eyes, tears streaking down her sticky face.

"Do whatever you feel like, bitch," Entrapta said. "Like, really, what do you think is gonna happen here? You say no and you win, somehow? You say yes and you win, somehow? Feh. Might as well just get it over with and die."

Shadow Weaver snapped her free set of Claws and a punitative stroke of black magic coursed through Entrapta's nerves. "You're trying my patience. Now is not an ideal time."

"Seriously, though," Scorpia said, edging up to Glimmer, "just do it. It'll be cool. Pinkie swear!" She held out a bone-crushing pedipalp. "Is what I'd say if I had a pinkie! But you get the picture."

Perfuma glided up to Glimmer, touching her chubby-cheeked face with two fingers. Glimmer flinched; her body was wreathed in a fresh coat of slime and it numbed her cheek where she touched. "Glimmer, I know it looks intimidating, but it's a beautiful thing. I've lost all doubt. Everything that feels like it should hurt... doesn't. You just listen to the goddess and it all feels good. It's so nice not to doubt."

Bow was crying. "I'm alright," he said, still barely comprehensible. "I've done good. I can... check out."

"Bow, I can't..." Glimmer said. "Alright. Alright. I'll do it. Throw me in there."

Perfuma gasped in delight. "Mighty Shadow Weaver, may I do the honors?"

"You may," Shadow Weaver said, pulling her thumb from Bow's mouth. He shook his head silently. "Surrender and it will take less time, Glimmer." She cast a cleansing spell and the mana-draining slime sloughed from the captive princess; Perfuma's vines pinned her arms and legs in place and carried her from the tree, which crumbled to dust in her wake.

"You didn't have to..." Bow said. "I could've..."

"Trust in She-Ra," Glimmer said.

* * *

It took eight horribly long minutes for Swiftwind to find water. Until then, She-Ra and Catra fought on his back.

Fighting Catra blind while trying not to kill her and while Swiftwind blasted ahead at full speed, periodically losing velocity and plummeting as Catra smeared him with more and more stamina-draining slime was every bit as fun as it sounded.

Catra slashed her back as if trying to strip the skin and flesh from her spine; she gnawed on Adora's neck, her teeth clamping down hard enough to close her windpipe; and she kept digging at She-Ra's face, trying to finish the job she'd begun.

For her part Adora kicked her in the stomach, elbowed her in the side of the head, tried to choke her out once--but it was difficult to hold tight, to keep the slippery, squirming Catra in place. She'd been splashing She-Ra this whole time, to, and at last, she was starting to lose strength.

It was a fleeting relief with Swiftwind said, "Here! This looks like some serious water!"

"Dive, Swifty! Dive!" Adora said, trying to pin Catra by her hands. Snarling, Catra responded by punting Adora in the stomach, her toe claws digging in tight as she raked her belly.

"On it!" Swifty said, and he began a sharp, final descent.

Being blinded, Adora didn't have room to judge Swiftwind on his landing, but he managed to miss it by enough yards that when Adora was thrown clean it was into silky tall grass. Taking advantage of Adora's weakening, Catra slipped free and into the grass herself as She-Ra tumbled.

Adora's elbow hit a jutting tree root; it hurt like a bitch when she hit her funny bone, but she was alive, and she used the twisting momentum to halt her skipping along the ground like a stone. She stood, half-crouching, and slowly became aware of just how heavily she had been fucked up.

She heard Swiftwind's splash as he hit water, and she heard the wind. As she listened, something flashed in her absence of sight: a visualization of the sounds she heard, of sensations against her skin, all rendered in green lines in what would be her field of vision.

She breathed slowly and concentrated.

But wow, that was a difficult proposition. Whatever was not covered with gouges was dripping with secondhand ooze. She could feel her sacred blood flowing out of her in crosshatch cuts. Whatever quality of Catra's claws that let her slice through the She-Ra's defenses in a way artillery couldn't

(the first cut is the deepest)

meant that in the thrall of Shadow Weaver Catra was capable of hurting her in a way that most of the Horde could only dream of. And she was out there in the grass, the tall grass swaying haunted in the gentle breeze like a simulation on an old computer screen. She waiting to finish the job of killing her. If Catra was really intent on killing her--really not going to stop at anything--dropping her She-Ra form was as good as handing over her own beating heart.

Focus, Adora. Focus...

She heard and felt grass, lots of it. Swiftwind's thrashing in the water had ceased and been replaced by the gentle flow of moving water. (Don't worry about him. Don't worry about him, Adora...) She heard birds chirping overhead. Insects scuttling around her boots, avoiding falling slime, scenting for falling blood. Movement, subtle and profound, at her feet... overhead... in the ground... to her...

Left.

She struck left, a short jab, but the movement was low and fast. Catra tagged her knees with her slimy tail in passing. Too late to catch her enemy in passing, she held still and anticipated the next attack.

Just let her hit you, she thought. You can take one more hit.

Yeah. Who cares if she rips open a jugular? Or claws open your stomach? Or gets those thumbs in your eyes one last time?

Then you'll be Adora and--

She let out a ragged breath. Oh, boy, was that a bad, bad idea.

And the only one she had.

She listened for the water. It was behind her... couldn't be more than ten yards away. Just ten yards. She could make--

Catra sprung from behind her. She heard the grass parting and rolled under her attack. It was a good guess; Catra almost missed. But she dug her talons into Adora's back as she sailed over her, dragging her claws from Adora's back to her shoulders.  She twisted in the air, her claws ripping spirals through She-Ra's armor and across her skin, and landed with her feet squarely on She-Ra's hips and her claws dug deep into the soft meat above her collar bones.

"Bleed," Catra whispered, and bit her throat.

Alright. Subtlety time is over. Clenching her teeth, fixating on the sound of water, Adora turned and ran, holding Catra in place in a massive bear hug. It should've been easy to keep her in place; it should've been trivial to cross the gap in two mighty bounds. Drained and bled, and growing weaker holding Catra to her chest, she could barely stumble through the tall grass to the water.

And Catra realized what was happening. Catra clenched her jaw tight; Adora heard Catra's jawbone strain (crack?) with the pressure. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't hold Catra. She...

Had an even worse idea.

Count of three.

One: change her grip. She took Catra by the head, pulled her away as she tilted her head back. Catra wriggled free and into the grass. Fine, be that way.

Two: hold still. She turned her back to the water again and tried to breathe. She could feel her connection to She-Ra fade. She was too damaged; actual majesty bled freely and pooled at her feet.

Three: wait for Catra.

She didn't have to wait long. Catra charged from the tall grass, from her front this time.

She dismissed She-Ra. She was shorter, smaller, less real, uninjured. She saw the great red blocks of First Ones language flash in her non-vision for the briefest moment before her world was replaced with flowing green.

WARNING she definitely saw. CURSED was another.

Adora was still covered head to toe in mind-control slime, and she had been soaking in it the entire time she had been She-Ra.

She had a plan; she'd had a plan.

Hold on to Catra, right? Once she inevitably pounced on her, she'd grab hold of her. Only her outer form was slimed, after all; as Adora she'd be stronger, at least for a few moments, long enough reach the water, and all would be well.

Catra burst from the high grass and struck her in the chest with her elbow; the two landed in a heap on the ground. Catra climbed on top of her, pinning her in place with her weight, now that they were much closer to each other's size.  She was below Catra, Catra drenched in thick green slime such that only by context Adora knew it was her.  And at the thought of being below Catra made her stomach turn with nausea. The Voice told her to be disgusted.

_Filthy, aborted thing. Kill her, Adora. For your mother; for the only one who loves you._

Her sword was on her back, its divine construction defiant of the enlightening ablution soaking her. Catra had ceased struggling; she could not see Catra just yet, but she could feel her seated on her chest, not moving.

All she had to do was...

* * *

Perfuma cooed as she bound Glimmer's wrist with vines. "Oh," Perfuma said, kissing the back of the captive princess's, "your gloves are fetching when they've been stained. The contrast of colors is exquisite." She flexed Glimmer's hands and kissed her wrists; where she kissed, oleanders grew, colored to match Glimmer's hair.

Entrapta watched from behind her goggles. She'd expected...

Well, she'd expected a lot of things. Like for Glimmer to be begging for her life, or to be trying to worm her way out of it, because she was done virtue signalling and would thus get back to serving her own self-interest like all sophonts will always do under every circumstance, as per the will of...

You know, like the boss said.

But she wasn't struggling. She stood straight, stared ahead, and refused to give anyone the satisfaction of making undignified noises, even when Perfuma looped a knotted vine across her crotch. The web-like pattern of knotted vines across Glimmer's body seemed unnecessary to Entrapta, but...

She had a vague feeling like she should be really turned on by all of this. But the connection of brain to clit wasn't happening. After days of perpetual intense horniness it was like stepping into a vacuum chamber. Things no longer felt the way they should. The new normal was fraying and rotting.

Why?

Perfuma lifted Glimmer into the air with thorny black rose vines; Glimmer couldn't stop a whimper. "I have wrapped a most beautiful present for you, Shadow Weaver!"

The Weaver finished her spell. "And I have prepared the ultimate solution for her. Entrapta, prepare the Slime Pit for our esteemed guest. Thanks to Perfuma's thoughtful gift, this is the most powerful enchantment yet. She will be mine a good long time... and once I have reentered Hordak's good graces, I will have sufficient power to ensure permanent control over my worshipers." Shadow Weaver stroked Glimmer's chin with the flat of her Terror Claws. "You can surrender at last, princess. Won't that be relaxing?"

Glimmer said nothing.

"Throw her in. Entrapta, if you please."

"Yes'm," Entrapta said.

Perfuma moved past her, Glimmer in tow.

Glimmer met Entrapta's gaze, not that she could've known, and whispered, "I'm sorry," her voice cracking, her eyes heavy with tears.

Perfuma lowered her into the pit. No one noticed Entrapta balling her fists.

She moved to the back end of the Slime Pit, the business end; she stopped by the barrels Weaver enchanted, picking up all four with her hair and walking on her own two legs, like a normal, to the vat at the back of the pit. She tinkered with the pumping mechanism, ejecting the drained barrels and replacing them. She selected the slime source, and... "Done," she said, cheerily.

* * *

  
Catra froze mid-strike. Her claws were deployed and razor-sharp. Adora was underneath her (as she should be), and she was drowned in slime (no...) and she was breathing steadily and slowly.  Her hand was in position to reach for her sword, but it hung still, hand half-opened.

She withdrew her claws. She wiped the thick layer of slime from Adora's eyes. When she could, Adora opened her eyes. They blazed crimson.

 _You took her from me,_ Catra thought.

_Shadow Weaver, you fuck, you took her from me._

Adora breathed, hesitantly, unwillingly. "Catra..." she said.

"Adora?"

"I hate you," Adora said, voice choked.  Her hand moved for her sword.

"You should," Catra said, and moved off of her. She ran her hands below Adora, feeling the (tempting, inviting) bite of her sword's blade scraping against her slime-caked skin. Adora didn't resist being lifted off the ground.

She wasn't as strong as Adora, not in any sense of the word, but with Adora in her arms, Catra cleared the last few yards between them and the river and dove in.

* * *

The helltrap's slime was up to her thighs. She was tied so tight it was difficult to stand in the filth, but she stood. She was a sad sight--once slimed already, her hair struggling to shine, her regal clothes soaked and stained, her expression one of absolute misery. There was no hope left.

But at least she could maintain her dignity.

How dignified had her dad been in those last moments?

Who was she kidding? He'd died a hero, as she would... as she would face this with heroic poise. Let Bitchy Bitch the Bitch Witch do what she may. Adora was still out there. Her loss was imminent.

Her loss had to be imminent.

"It's over," Shadow Weaver said. "Give in, and it will be over sooner."

"Don't give in!" Bow said, still suspended from Perfuma's conjured trees--though she'd moved him closer to the pit, the better to witness Glimmer's enchantment. "Drag this shit out 'til--"

Scorpia closed her pincer around his neck. "Dude. A little propriety, please?" she said.

"Thank you, Scorpia," Shadow Weaver said. "No last words before you achieve enlightenment, princess?"

Glimmer raised her head at last, and in subconscious imitation of her mother spoke four words with regal bearing and poise worthy of an angel:

"Kiss my clit, bitch."

Shadow Weaver laughed. "When he was your age, your father  _begged_ me to let him kiss it.  I let him, child, only when he learned his place."

Glimmer's stomach wrenched out of place. She kept her head high, but when she closed her eyes tears streaked down her face.

"He let me down, the little whore..." Weaver said.  "...but you won't. Pour the slime."

The snake skull's jaws split open, the head tilted down, and the slime flowed. A long, thick stream draped over Glimmer's proud head, and the process began.

* * *

There was a

dis  
con  
tin  
uity

and Adora was awake, awake again, freed from the haze--ironic given that she came to in a blinding, syrupy cloud of slime suspended in water. The waters were warm, like a loving embrace, and...

She was held. Someone was hugging her like they missed her.

Catra. Oh, shit, Catra had--

Catra was trembling, and they were underwater and the slime occluded everything and oh fuck they were going to drown--

An enormous, warm body rose from under them, catching the two women on his back. With a few mighty strokes of his wings, Swiftwind brought her and Catra to the surface.

Catra and Adora gasped for breath as Swiftwind whinneyed in triumph. "Told you!" he said, once he was treading water and making headway to the riverbank. "Running water! Super found it all by myself!"

"We passed over like three rivers before getting here, you dick!" Catra sputtered.

"Yes! But those didn't have runoff from the Crystal Falls." He reached the bank and clopped onto shore, flexing his wings free of... well, less heavily soaked with water. "I could've dumped you into any ol' body of water, but this stuff's supposed to be good healing... stuff... so..."

"Thank you," Adora said. "I'm going to roll off now, Catra, so either--"

Catra jumped off of her, spinning in midair and landing on her feet just before she landed in the tall grass. Without warning she shook herself less-soaking-wet, spraying Swiftwind and Adora. Once Adora was off him, Swiftwind shook himself off right back at her.

"Oh, don't get started with me, spike horse," Catra said, flipping him off with both middle fingers. "I can keep this shit up all day."

"She really can," Adora said. "The last time she took a bath-bath she shook at me like all day." She let out a terrified breath and realized that her entire body was wracked with cold spasms of adrenaline comedown. "Let's just thank Bastet that she's not covered in fur."

"Plus?" Swiftwind said. "Imagine trying to get her clean if she was fuzzy."

"Don't make me imagine," Catra said. She made the mistake of looking Adora in the eyes, as Adora looked in hers.

They were back to normal. Catra's clear-noon-sky blue and daisy yellow; Adora's mid-morning blue. They were both still stained from their experience in the Slime Pit; Catra's hair was a mop of ooze mostly stuck to her back, her tail sad and bedraggled. Adora's ponytail managed to equal Catra's hair and tail for patheticness. Their clothes were stained, their skin smeared. Catra's clothes were shredded; she was exposed to the world.

Something clicked in Adora's head.

Catra saw the realization flash across Adora's face. She put on a brave face. "Hey... it's fine. I'm fine. Entrapta and Scorpia are... well..." She laughed, the most insincere laugh of her life. "They're... they were gentle. They... they didn't mean it. Any of it. Shadow Weaver made them so it's okay. It's not their fault."

"Can I step closer?" Adora said.

"Sure," Catra said.

Adora stepped forward; one step, two. She held out her hand.

Catra trembled, and with a single sob closed the distance in a massive hug. " _They didn't mean it,_ " Catra said, again and again.

"They didn't," Adora said, stroking her back. "They didn't."

Catra stammered to a stop.  After a long wait, she said, "We're gonna find Shadow Weaver, and we are going to fucking murder her."

Adora thought. "Better idea. First, we'll beat her ass. Then, after we get things sorted out, you can take her back to Hordak."

Catra laughed. It sounded a little more sincerely this time. "Holy shit. And they call _us_ the _Evil_ Horde? Adora, you're stone-cold cruel."

"What can I say. Shadow Weaver brings out the best in me."

"Please say you have something for the..." Catra grabbed a lock of her hair and squeezed. "For this. I mean, not for me, for..."

"I think I do," Adora said. She stepped back and drew the Sword of Protection. "Brace yourself. This is gonna get weirder."

"How?" Catra said.

" _For the Honor of Grayskull!_ " Adora assumed one of She-Ra's stat-spread-costume-formes.

"Like that," Swiftwind said.

* * *

 

_"As the ice forms around your lips_

_Try to breathe in"_

\--Gunship, "[Kitsune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Wb4dEwp_c)"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Skin" beat "fur" pretty handily. Sorry, fur-voters!
> 
> I have edited this to fit in a revelation from season 2. One that only required a little bit of retconning, rather than "dammit, chapter one is gonna need to be rewritten from the ground up to be season two compliant." Eh, so it goes...


	9. ...And Many a Thorn Stood Between...

_Drink me_

_eat me_

_then you'll see the Light_

\--Ghost, "[See the Light](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQPgumd-v8g)"

* * *

 

More than anything Glimmer felt the slime as a weight, flexible and clammy. It draped over her head, it sluiced down her shoulders, it dribbled down her hips and thighs. It wanted to drag her down into the pool of ooze she stood in. It was sticky, oh yes--it soaked through her clothes and seemed to permeate through her skin. She had a vivid image of her skin being stained green.  
The slime overwhelmed her senses. Her eyes were closed so hard she could see stars for fear it would do more than sop into her eyelashes. She heard the stuff wash past her ears, a dripping, squishy sound. She had to breathe through it; however air permeated through the stuff the smell, chemical and industrial, filled her nose, so heady she could taste it, too.

She had been covered head to toe for.... how long? It felt endless. She could've been in the mess for hours. Her legs were quivering from the effort of keeping her standing in the falls. She was exhausted. All she wanted to do was lie down and let the slime pour 'til it ran out.

She had been in the pit for thirty seconds.

* * *

"I shall stem the flow," Shadow Weaver said, waving at the Pit. "It's been five minutes. Surely her heart cannot be more broken."

The skull clamped shut. Glimmer stood where she had been standing; she was faintly bowed by the weight of the slime, but she was on her feet, and as the last drops hit her head, she stood straight once more.

Shadow Weaver made a soft noise. "Spiteful creature, isn't she."

"I'll go check and make sure she's been converted!" Entrapta said, vaulting into the pit's depths. She landed on her pigtails and sloshed through the mire to the captive princess.

"Come on, Glimmer," Bow said. "You can do it..."

Entrapta fussed with Glimmer, giving her a brisk physical checkup. She leaned in close to examine her eyes. She flinched away and retrieved an extra pair of goggles stuck onto her hair, popping them on Glimmer. "There we go! Her eyes are like so bright it's kinda blinding. This'll let her see while her eyes adjust to the magic." She picked the princess up and climbed out with a little help from Perfuma's vines.

Entrapta plopped Glimmer on the ledge. The princess's stalwart pose and refusal to move had led to her being evenly coated, and quite thickly. Slime dribbled down her in waves across her curvaceous form, trickling from her broad hips onto the cool stone. Her shoulders were slumped; she shuddered as she breathed. A pair of Entrapta's goggles were strapped over her eyes.

"What does the princess say, Glim-Glim?" Entrapta said.

She opened her mouth, breathing sowly to free her mouth of its coating. "Hail Shadow Weaver," she said, voice slurred as if she were drunk. "Hail the mistress. Long live Shadow Weaver." She slumped forward at last; Entrapta caught her with one ponytail and nudged her upward by the chin.

"No..." Bow said, slumping in his restraints.

"There, there," Perfuma said, carressing his stomach. He squirmed at her clammy, probing, strength-draining touch.

"Yeah, five minutes was like super overkill," Entrapta said. "It drained her stamina after it got her all magicked up. And the regular stuff doesn't even do that to us!" She rubbed against Scorpia, who allowed it. "See? Nothin'."

Shadow Weaver chortled. "Pathetic. See what your nobility bought you?" She ran one Terror Claw up Glimmer's body, slicing away the bindings keeping her locked in place. She quivered at the gentle pressure slicing open her clothes as well, judging from the sound of tearing fabric. "Nothing at all but the ability to hold your head high as I prepare you like a fine dinner."

"What does the mighty Shadow Weaver intend of me?" Glimmer said.

"What was that you said before your bath?" Shadow Weaver said.

"I believe," Glimmer said, "I invited you to kiss my... clitoris."

Shadow Weaver glanced around. "It is quite the pity your friend and my useless wastrel are out there, or else I'd have you kiss mine, here and now, to see how you compare to your father. Instead, I think I'll let you bring me the She-Ra. We shall begin the flow; simply teleport her in place, and gravity and my magic shall handle the rest. Do you understand me, you toad of a cambion? Devil's daughter?"

"I understand completely, mistress Shadow Weaver."

"Good." She transferred a small amount of power to her. "That should let you pursue your quarry and bring her to me. Scorpia, go with her. Entrapta, mobilize your drones. Perfuma, tear this forest apart until you find the She-Ra... and Catra, if you must."

"Yes, goddess!" Perfuma said.

"Sure thing," Entrapta said, loping off to where she kept her drones.

"Sounds good to me," Scorpia said, popping her neck. She pat Glimmer on the back and steered her towards the edge of the forest where Perfuma approached in her poison flower throne.  
"And you..." Shadow Weaver said, turning to Bow. "What to do with you?"

Bow kept his silence, though his face was puffy and tear-streaked.

"Mm. You're a very handsome young man." She stroked his face with the back of her right Claw; he whimpered. "There is so much I can do to you. I could throw you into the pit, but what if She-Ra is found before too long? That wouldn't do."

"W-well..." he said, "plus you could get ambushed or something. And you don't wanna be, uh, busy... doing... things..."

"Mm... there are many handsome men. And what would break She-Ra more than knowing that her little princess-whore is mine and her pet boy-whore is dead?"

Bow's pupils constricted.

Shadow Weaver groaned in ecstasy. She could feel her juices slithering down her ashen thighs. "It is a sincere pity that you won't enjoy this as much as I will. Perhaps it will comfort you knowing that your death will be a thing of beauty."

Distantly, she heard Glimmer say something, and Scorpia respond.

Shadow Weaver pressed the tip of one claw against Bow's cheek, drawing blood.

"Your face I'll leave be. Let's start with--"

She heard a bright sound behind her head.

* * *

  
"Hey, is that a rock?" Glimmer said, her head trained on a large, flat rock jutting up from the grass.

"I'm no expert, but I think it is," Scorpia said.  "Actually, wait.  Lemme make sure it's not a bloodsto--"

Glimmer lunged for it and teleported out.

"Hey!" Scorpia said.

She heard a bright noise from somewhere behind her, and turned to see Shadow Weaver turning to see Glimmer appear a yard in the air above her. Thanks to that, Glimmer brought the rock down on her forehead instead of the base of her skull; Shadow Weaver made a gurgling sound and collapsed unconscious instead of outright dead.

Glimmer tried to heft the stone, didn't quite manage it, and just let it drop onto Weaver's chest.  "That's for raping my father, _asshole_ _."_

"Glimmer?!" Bow said.

Glimmer grabbed his wrists and teleported them both a few yards away. She yanked her goggles off; her eyes were still her own shade of purple. "Still here and kicking ass," she said.

"The fuck!" Scorpia said.

A stream of magic-draining slime raced past her head; she backed out of the way. "The _fuck_!"

"Eee!" Perfuma said, retreating into her flower as the stream moved towards her.

Entrapta rode one of her drones into the clearing, directing the slime spray. Her goggles were planted on her forehead and her eyes were her natural magenta. "Hello!" she said. "I got tired of being mind-jacked by that spooky magic bitch, so I decided to stop. You gonna stop too?"

Scorpia rolled under Entrapta's lead slime-squirting drone and picked it up. "No, m'am!" Scorpia said.

"Ah, dang it!" Entrapta said, leaping to another drone as Scorpia threw her lead drone into one of the others. The bots exploded. "Hey, go easy on them, they're innocent!"

"Innocent like... uh..." Scorpia said, weaving between leg strikes from one of the four remaining drones. "What's the guiltiest animal, Perfuma?"

"Sophont-kind?" Perfuma said, peeking out from her flower. She cast a spell and the drone fighting Scorpia fell apart as poison ivy grew in vast profusion in its vitals.

"That's the obvious answer! I mean, there's gotta be like a regular animal that's super guilty all the time!" She ducked behind her claw and tanked a fusillade of stun bolts from the three drones. "Little help here? Like, with both of these?"

Perfuma glided closer, conjuring dead tree limbs in the drones' laser turrets. "This defiance must be punished!" she said, swiping her hand over Entrapta; lilies of the valley tangled in knots around her body and hair. "You won't like this, trait--oh." An arrow was now sticking out of the side of her flower. She hopped out with a splash of goop; the arrow exploded, taking out her ride.

"Yeah, take it!" Bow said, drawing another arrow. "Glimmer do something cool because _I don't have a lot of arrows left_ please."

"I got this!" Glimmer said, and slumped to her knees. "Oh jeez this glop is taking it out of me give me a sec..."

Two drones pinned Scorpia down, but a few stings to the joints damaged one enough for her to throw it off of her. She grappled the other's leg in both claws, twisting it 'til the metal screeched into an ungainly curve. With a sharp twist she popped the limb free and slapped the two-legged drone with it.

Perfuma bound up Bow's hands with thorny boughs of holly as he tried to draw an arrow, but Glimmer blinked out before she could bind her. "What to do, what to do..." Perfuma thought, and ducked and shrouded herself in dead tree branches as Glimmer blinked back in to try and kick her in the head. She bounced off a bough and landed on her feet.

"This is as far as you--" Glimmer said.

A noose of shadow slipped over her neck; she grabbed it before it could choke her out, but it bit deep into her fingers and made breathing a chore. She sped across the grass, dragged along by the noose 'til she was in the grasp of Shadow Weaver.

She'd cracked Shadow Weaver's mask but good. As Weaver hoisted her off the ground, she took the edge of her mask with her free claw and ripped it away.

Glimmer flinched. Shadow Weaver's face was webbed with lines of rot; her pupils were misshapen and angular, streaked with veins. Her lips peeled back from irregular, jagged teeth. "Princess Glimmer..." she said. "Continuing to be the second-worst person to ever happen to me."

"I aspire to first place," Glimmer said, smirking.

Shadow Weaver spread her claws wide. "You won't live long enough." She wound back and swiped through a haze of sparkles. She reacted fast enough to block Glimmer's kick at the base of her skull with a wall of shade. "Damn you, cambion!" she said, swiping at her as she fell; she ducked under the attack and rolled away from Weaver's furious slashes.

"Still tasting that concussion, huh?" Glimmer said, a moment before a flytrap grew under her, snapping around her torso. "Ah, come on," she said, pulling at its lips. "Come on, stupid..."

"Losing strength already?" Shadow Weaver said.

"Bow, little help?" Glimmer said.

"Sorry!" Bow said; a dewy flytrap held him over Glimmer.

"Ragh!" Scorpia said, holding the bound Entrapta over her head. "I'm here too!"

"Sorry, guys," Entrapta said.

Perfuma slumped up to the group. "Finally," she said. "That was terribly unkind of all of you."

"Explain, you gormless idiot," Shadow Weaver said, aiming a bolt of mana at Entrapta.

"Are you a peer-reviewed journal?" Entrapta said. "'Cause if you ain't--"

"Scorpia, you're good with machines, yes?" Shadow Weaver said.

"Yeah," Scorpia said. "It helps if I have someone with hands do the... finger... stuff, but yeah."

"Good." She shot Entrapta through the liver. Bow and Glimmer screamed in shock; Perfuma covered her mouth, eyes wide; Scorpia blinked, startled.

Entrapta curled up in Scorpia's grasp. She squeaked something that was almost "Help" and fell limp, eyes half-lidded, drool trickling from a corner of her mouth. Black magic festered in the wound, plugging it up.

"She refreshed herself too recently in stronger slime. If she broke through this, she might break through another." Shadow Weaver popped her shoulders. "And so she dies, slowly and painfully. Is there any objection to this?"

Glimmer hurled obscenities at her; Bow was staring, soundless, trying to think of anything to say and failing.

"Excellent. Scorpia, discard her and prepare the pit. We'll be feeding both these rebels to it at once. May they suffer at length."

"Yes'm," Scorpia said, turning to throw Entrapta to the ground.

There was a sound like a breaking fire hydrant [and Perfuma squealed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy9KpprZRJA). Shadow Weaver was quicker on the draw after having been ambushed one time too many tonight; she saw the stream of water impact Perfuma's back, realized the source, and pulled up a shield of shadows just in time to catch a storm of bubbles.

The bubbles struck with sufficient force to shove Shadow Weaver back a yard and into Scorpia, who stumbled back on one foot, Entrapta still in her claws. "Damn, it's gettin' real alluvasudden!" she said.

The storm let up and Shadow Weaver collapsed her barrier into a shape like a riot shield. She fired magic at the Slime Pit, aiming around the skull. She saw movement, and as she traced her attack up, Catra landed on her shield at an angle, latching on with the claws on her feet and left hand.

Her clothes had been mended somehow, her breasts covered by a strip of pink fabric, her groin by a black silken loincloth. She had a First Ones weapon in her hand, a ludicrous pink machine with a black glass reservoir full of glittering water for a magazine

"Hey, bitch," she said, aimed the gun over Shadow Weaver's shield, and fired a burst of water at point blank.

Shadow Weaver sputtered and explosively dismissed the shield, sending Catra flying. Adora leapt for her and caught her hand and swung her over at Perfuma, firing once more as the princess tried to tangle her in plant growth.

She crouched behind her shield and Adora fired--she had a First Ones gun of some sort too, a massive longarm with a rounded, open-topped bulge for a muzzle. The bulge was full of glittering water with a pinkish hue; floating in the bulge was a chain of seven rings. They spun at high speed and projected more force bubbles... over her head, going for Scorpia.

She looked back and saw Scorpia forced back. As each bubble struck, it burst, showering her with water and washing the slime from her servant's chest and shoulders.

"You..." Shadow Weaver stammered.

"Yeah," Adora said. "Me."

* * *

Cool +2. Hard +0. Hot -1. Sharp +1. Weird +1. The Bubble Power stat-forme was level-headed, quick-thinking, and it packed little extra magic.

This She-Ra stat-forme sported pink digital camo in lieu of gold, save for the starburst on her chest; her tiara became a pink-tinged visor flanged with golden wings. The Sword of Power changed to a hefty alchemist's bubbler (so the readout called it) with an underslung spout cannon (likewise). The spout cannon detached from the bubbler, and so Catra was armed to help free their friends.

(The clothing repair was just something she could do. According to her readout, it was simply called "Clothes Beam." Sure.)

Adora had a suspicion in her heart--not deep at all, practically tattooed on the damn thing--that she was a bad person. Seeing Shadow Weaver's hideous face contorted into an expression of terror made her feel wonderful, and that was plenty of proof.

"Not too late to give up," Adora said, shouldering the alchemist's bubbler.

"Kill her," Shadow Weaver said, cringing behind her shield. Scorpia stepped in front of her and flung Entrapta straight at Adora. Adora caught her with a free hand and opened fire on Scorpia as she charged her, going for her claws. Scorpia weaved out of her stream of bubbles, seizing her weapon with one pincer while going for her Entrapta-arm with the other. Her stinger waved behind her head, juking as she lined up for a sting.

Adora let Scorpia grab her and headbutted her right on the forehead. The arachnid flinched and responded with a sting to Adora's neck.

Adora dropped her gun and grabbed Scorpia's tail. With a smirk she tore it free from her skin--it left a weeping welt but had not quite pierced her skin--and slammed her on the ground behind her, then slammed her where she had been standing, and planted her boot on Scorpia's lower back. She scooped up her bubble shooter and sprayed her up and down, cleaning her back and legs.

Scorpia hesitantly pushed up from the ground. "Eurgh..." she said. "That... uh..." Her eyes dimmed from red to black. "Duck left."

She-Ra hopped to the left, scythes of black magic slicing the air where she once stood, crashing into the wall of the Slime Pit 3.0. "Thanks," Adora said, aiming at the risen Shadow Weaver.

"No problem," Scorpia said, standing tall. "Hi, Weaver. I'd like to register a complaint."

Weaver hissed. "What did you do to her?" she said, slicing the air upward. Black magic burst from below Scorpia's feet, sending her into the air nonplussed.

"You set up shop next to a famous healing spring, you fucking idiot!" Catra said, leaping from a tree with grasping limbs and exploding pods of needles Perfuma was creating. "Maybe you should've taken care of that first, huh?!"

Shadow Weaver's retort was silenced by Glimmer teleporting onto her back, latching on with the full of her waning strength. She wiped slime onto the witch's face. "Guess who had enough left for--" she said. Her one-liner was interrupted by Shadow Weaver jabbing her through the thigh with her Terror Claws. "Through" was the operating word; she nailed her clean through the bone.

She rammed her other claw where Glimmer's head should be and hit nothing. Glimmer hit the grass next to the liberated Bow, landing wetly. "...two..." Glimmer said.

Bow loosed a grenade arrow at the sorceress as Adora laid fire (bubbles?) on Perfuma. Weaver blew the arrow out of the air before it came in range of her; Bow followed that up by emptying his quiver at her. She zorched two more grenades, a chain arrow, an armor-piercing bullet-headed arrow, an alchemical glue bomb, and failed to stop a regular, plain arrow from lodging into her hip.

That distracted her a minute.

"Hang in there, Glimmer..." Bow said, struggling to rip his pant leg to make a bandage. "Dammit, dammit, I could've saved one of those... frickin'..."

Weaver snipped the arrow from her hip and extracted the arrowhead with sorcery, throwing it to the ground. Scorpia's claw clamped on her extended claw.

"My complaint," she said, ripping the Terror Claw from her hand.

Perfuma raised her defenses, but Adora was too strong and Catra too fast. They pinned her in place, hosing her down with the healing waters run off from the Crystal Falls; soon she was blasted clean, more or less, and fell limp, not quite falling to the ground. Catra and Adora held their fire. She opened her eyes again--she was clear. "I... appear... to have been party... to very unfortunate things," she said.

"Also?" Catra said. "Your junk's hanging out."

Perfuma gestured and a simple dress of enormous leaves covered her nudity. "Is that better?"

"Yes, thank you," Catra said. She looked over to Scorpia and Shadow Weaver, then back at Glimmer and Bow... and to Entrapta. "Alright... let's see what these guns can do for hurt."

* * *

"Why--" Scorpia said, "would--you--make--me--do--that--to--Catra--you--un--believe--able--piece--of--humanoid--garbage?!!"

Each word was a punch, and a punch with the points of a scorpion's claw was a punch that meant it. Weaver threw up her last claw, trying to concentrate on a hex, on a word of power, on anything, but soon Scorpia caught it in her claws and wrenched it free and she was unarmed and she was powerless.

And Scorpia was upon her, hooking her right in the liver. It felt like a lifetime of sickness had rushed back into her blood; she doubled over and puked onto the grass.

Scorpia stepped back and let her empty out, tapping her toes on the grass as she waited. "You done?" she said.

Shadow Weaver looked up and Scorpia clamped her claw under her chin, gripping nice and tight. She let Weaver get a hold on her claws before lifting her; no use breaking her neck now. She had friends to meet.

Catra and Adora were tending to Entrapta and Glimmer. Set on low, Adora's bubble cannon thingey rained healing bubbles on Entrapta's damaged side; each bubble drained darkness from the wound and drifted away to pop harmlessly, 'til no darkness remained and her side was nicely cleaned. Catra poured water over Glimmer's leg, closing the injuries.

"Looks like your plan worked, Weaver," Scorpia said, "in the sense that it failed entirely and now we have you at our mercy. So... I guess it's more like Catra's plan worked? Catra, did you have a plan?"

"Nope," she said. "This would be the She-Ra's doing. The guns, the... outfits."

"Pink looks g--nevermind," Scorpia said. "I mean... nevermind. Later. See what you did to us, Weaver? We had a good thing going. And this is what you did."

Shadow Weaver was in no position to justify herself. As Scorpia held her, Perfuma conjured floral wreathes to bind her good and tight.

"You know," Catra said, handing the water sprayer back to Adora, "I've had a lot of things on my mind the last couple days. But... you've had a long couple days yourself, haven't you?" she said. She walked over to the edge of the Slime Pit. "Tell you what. You look like lukewarm roadkill. You could use a bath..."

Scorpia hoisted her. "A nice, long bath in the Slime Pit!" she said, and threw her, screaming, into the pit. She landed with a splash, vanishing into the waist-deep ooze. She surfaced not long after; the stuff had coated her completely in the few moments she had been under the surface. Her long, wavy hair had soaked through quite thoroughly; it weighed her down as much as her tattered robes and the floral bondage.

"You know," Catra said, "'in the Slime Pit' was implied."

"I wanted to join in the one-liners..."

Catra reached for her and felt a sudden terrified block as her hand approached Scorpia's shoulder. She swallowed her next sentence and took her hand away. "It's cool," she said. "It's always cool."

"Hey," Entrapta said, lifting her head off the ground where Adora had laid her. "If anybody has any explosives or something..." She hoisted herself up by her hair. "Aim there, there, and there." She pointed at points along the Slime Pit's back wall.

Adora adjusted the firing strength of the alchemist's bubbler. "Can do." She aimed down the holographic sights and fired short bursts that blew the brickwork from the base of the pit, raining powder and debris. She exposed the pipe works inside the pit's walls, three tall metal pipes converging inside the snake skull.

Bereft of support, the pipes sagged and bent under its weight.

In the pit, Shadow Weaver floundered above the disgusting slime, gasping for breath. She could barely wriggle like a snake (or a worm...) through the muck.

All the time she had watched her slaves suffer in the Slime Pit she presumed they were overselling the experience. Surely getting a little dirty couldn't feel that bad.

No. This stuff was _disgusting_. She hated it, hated it so very much, and she had already breathed the stuff, drank it in a mad gasp for air. She wished, sincerely, that Scorpia had just snapped her neck.

She heard the noise, or realized the noise, too late, and looked behind her to see the snake skull, jaws lolling open, slowly land directly on top of her, pinning her in place.  
She stared into the pipes where the slime emerged.

She heard a groaning of machinery.

Entrapta, back at the pit's controls, actually loaded the full barrels of new slime into the hopper, switching input from 100% the pit's depleted reserves of slime to 100% the fresh stuff. It would switch automatically to the pool's reserves when the new stuff depleted. Without anyone at the controls, or Shadow Weaver to magically activate it, it would just keep going as long as the generator had power.

Which it would for another week.

In the depths of the pit, Shadow Weaver stared her own ultimate slime in the face as it washed over her.

She wouldn't drown, but she desperately wished she could.

* * *

Soon enough Catra had cleaned everyone off and healed them up, and Perfuma called up simple garments for everyone whose clothes had been irreversibly damaged or destroyed from sliming... or other things.

Entrapta lay against the ruined bulk of one of her drones. "Eeeurgh. Okay, I know I'm s'pposed to be you guys's... bad guy... but that was awful. Just awful. I'm sorry I... like... made it happen."  
Glimmer hugged her, something that made her freak out just a little bit. "You're not our bad guy," Glimmer said. "I missed you. It's great to have you back."

"You should see the memorial I made for you!" Perfuma said. "It is tall and proud and beautiful, like you are!"

"You made a memorial for her?" Scorpia said. "Huh. You know, that's pretty alright of you guys. Kudos."

Entrapta tried to process all of the above and settled for sobbing incoherently into Glimmer's shoulder.

Catra returned her part of the bubble power kit; Adora latched the component back onto her gun, then dropped back to her normal form. The Sword of Protection became a sword again. She gripped it tight and planted it in the ground. "And that was that."

"I really hate to say it," Catra said, smiling, "but thank you."

"We're not monsters, you know," Adora said. "We're on the other side, but... nobody deserved that."

"'Cept Shadow Weaver for doing it!" Scorpia said.

"Sure," Adora said. "You are gonna bring her to Hordak, yeah?"

"Yeah... sooner than later. I think I'm..." Catra glanced at Entrapta. "I... uh..."

Scorpia looked at her feet.

Entrapta sniffled miserably. "Yeah... Glimmer, c... could you lemme go? Just a moment?"

"Alright," Glimmer said, stepping back.

Entrapta crept toward Scorpia; the two of them stayed a few yards away from Catra, who was looking at Adora quite steadfastly.

"I..." Catra said. "I think I... I, uh... maybe we..."

"That was truly a horrible experience we have all made it through," Perfuma said. "If it pleases you, I extend a humble invitation to the Crystal Falls, and to a night in Plumeria's capitol. I ask nothing of you besides the courtesy of a guest. I will endeavor not to proselytize the cause of the Rebellion. We are together in pain today."

Adora spoke for Catra when she failed to summon the words. "Shadow Weaver... she made... she forced some very, unspeakably bad things to happen. It was while she had them controlled, but... it happened."

Catra cried in silence. Her ears were tucked against her head, her tail wrapping under her and around her belly.

Perfuma covered her mouth.

"No..." Bow said.

Glimmer glared at the Slime Pit. "Okay. Instead of showing mercy to the serial rapist, how about we just beat her to death with rocks?"

"Not now," Bow said in a stage whisper.

"No..." Catra said. "I kinda feel like it too. I feel like I kind of want to pull her fucking guts out like she said she was going to do to me, all the fucking time. I can't fucking close my eyes without thinking about how much I want to see her stop moving..."

Entrapta lay her head on Scorpia's chest. Scorpia rest her pincer on her back in turn.

"And... I shouldn't." She popped her claws and pressed them against her thigh; Adora took her hand and gently pulled it away. "But..." The words failed to summon and she cried them soundlessly into Adora's shoulder. Adora stroked her flattened hair and back and let her let it out.

"Catra..." Scorpia said. "I don't know if you... if you never want to see us again, we understand."

"Not your fault," Catra said, eventually. "She... she hurt you too. As bad as she hurt me. We're... we're all her..."

"...survivors," Adora said, hugging her. "We won. She lost. And... you can start healing. And the best revenge you can take is... is taking your life back from her. And being the kind of person I know you are, Catra. Smart, fast, unstoppable. You're better than her. You're a better class of Horde than anyone. And no matter what she made you do... you're all better than that. You're people I'm proud to face on the battlefield. You believe. You're honest about what you do. You're honorable. And... you didn't deserve this. Any of this."

Scorpia hugged Entrapta; Entrapta hugged her with all four limbs and both ponytails. "You said those falls are... healing falls, Flower Chick?"

"Yes," Perfuma said. "Healing for the body and soul... a start of healing for the soul. Not the end, but the first step."

"Hell, that sounds great. Let's go."

* * *

_So this is how it feels_

_to breathe in the summer air_

\--Poe, "Control" (above)

 


	10. Your Gravity Surrounds Me

_I can't let go._

_I need to know._

\--King Black Acid, "[Great Spaces](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5M2PWrYeNk)"

* * *

 

Swiftwind landed delicately and knelt on the grass. "Congratulations on the victory, Adora... and Adora's friend Catra... and Adora's other friends... Et cetera." He saluted her with his wing as she helped Catra onto his back.

"You were going to swoop in if we needed help, right?" Adora said, cocking an eyebrow with rather more force than necessary.

"Of course," he said, with a dismissive hoof gesture. "Why would I abandon you? That would be lame. And no horse wants to be lame."

"Just givin' you a hard time," Adora said, scratching his mane. "Pretty sure Swifty can fit three if one of you want to come along."

"Nah!" Scorpia said, taking a seat in a massively oversized sunflower. "This is, like, a fantasy I've had since I was five? Sittin' in a flower, nice and cozy, ready to sting the shit out of anyone who picks me up."

"We won't be far behind you," Perfuma said, standing at the head of her vine carriage with the rest of Adora and Catra's running crew in tow.

"See you there!" Swifty said. With a brisk trot and a powerful stroke of his wings he was in the air. Perfuma raced behind him, the trees parting to make way for her.

They left the Slime Pit and the sorceress to each others' company.

* * *

"Wow," Adora whispered as Swiftwind trotted into the place of the Crystal Falls.

Swiftwind followed the river to its source. The bough of the jungle entwined into a dome over it; even at midday the light glimpsing through tiny gaps in the tree cover gave an impression of night. The air was cooled by sprays of mist coming from the great lake. The shore was warm, soft stone, faintly porous; the waters were clear, such that Adora saw that she would be immersed to her shoulders if she stood at the lake's deepest point. Growing in a tangle around the shore were dozens of wildflowers and fruits that were so beautiful, and each complimentary in their beauty, they may have been arranged.

The Crystal Falls themselves were a towering thing of pink chalcedony, maybe twenty feet tall at its point. Growing at the point was a vivid indigo orchid a good ten feet across; sparkling pinkish water flowed from its weeping eye, pouring into a massive blue bivalve shell, from there to an even larger shell partially immersed in the lake.

Swifty waited outside the jungle-cavern; by his admission he sort of broke the mood a bit. Bow and Glimmer bathed nearer the shore; Bow scrubbed and washed up actively while Glimmer lay with her head on a plush pile of leaves conjured by Perfuma and let her aching body rest.

Scorpia and Entrapta knelt in the lake, Perfuma standing over them and performing Plumerian rites of psychological well-being. Perfuma rest her hand on Scorpia's head. "Scorpia of the House of the Black Garnet, you are in a safe place.

No harm can reach you here. The water shares your burden. The water will help you cleanse. We all enter wounded. We will leave more whole."

"Yes m'am," Scorpia said. "...That... it's okay to say that, right?"

"It is."

"Cool. Excellent."

Perfuma took a step to the left and put her hand on Entrapta's head. "Entrapta of the Kingdom of Dryl, you are in a safe place."

"Is there a faster version of this?" Entrapta said, squirming. "I got a lotta issues to go through and I don't wanna be here all day."

Perfuma glanced at Scorpia.

"I wouldn't mind the quick version," Scorpia said.

Perfuma touched both of their heads. "Hold your breath and keep your eyes open."

They did, Entrapta clapping her goggles over her eyes with her hair first, and Perfuma dipped them below the waters. A phantasmagoric parade of life events flashed before their eyes, deathlike. Perfuma counted to nineteen and raised them above the waters. "What did you see?"

Scorpia stared into the distance. "You ever have that feeling like you're trapped in a mechanism that empowers the predatory and makes it so their prey are unable to fight back? And, like, you never noticed it before until you were the person lower on the rung than someone else?"

Perfuma nodded. "What did you see, Entrapta?"

Entrapta sniffled. "I... I think I saw, like, that I got... taken advantage of. And that I hurt people but I didn't know how bad I was hurting them and they know I didn't know..." She hiccuped. "I think I wanna take another look..."

"The water can only take away the scars of the body," Perfuma said, resting her head on Entrapta's. "But it can make the healing of the scars of the mind an easier task. Entrapta, you are not unforgivable. Few truly are, no matter the breadth or depth of their transgressions against the Universe. May I hug you?"

"Please," Entrapta said.

Scorpia joined in, and Perfuma didn't mind at all. Not one bit.

Adora and Catra sat on the second bivalve shell. Adora sat under a gentle shower from the first shell; she used a fresh rag, soaped up with cleansing sap from one of many healing plants growing around the Crystal Falls, to work on Catra's hair and tail. The brief dip earlier swept most of the slime away, but there were gluey knots still trapped in the depths of her dense hair and along the length of her tail.

Catra had been silent since they set foot in the Crystal Falls. The chalcedony behind the falls had been polished to a mirror sheen over however many centuries--millennia, even--this place had existed. In its reflection she was haggard, her eyes heavy with bags. Her hair plastered at her back removed the illusion of additional height and breadth; she looked very much like a small, fragile magickat.

(being cleaned by a diligent, loving owner)  
(shut the fuck up brain)  
(i said shut the fuck up)

The bath felt like old times. Catra hated water. She could tolerate showers long enough to hurridly scrub herself clean, but baths were right out. When she really needed to be cleaned, it took Adora extending some of her shower credits to get extra time to clean her with a washrag and type-6 personnel cleansing agent. Catra protested the entire time, but she

(don't)  
(no)  
(don't)  
(sinful creature thinking with your)

always loved it. Adora was gentle before and she was gentle now, gently daubing her ears clean, washing her back of lingering green patina, scrubbing the base of her tail

(where it felt so good so wonderful so calming)

and in general just being nice.

Just being nice.

(you're both naked you're both naked you're both naked)

They were both naked. And Adora was no less beautiful after years in the Rebellion and Catra was no less fit. And in spite of what her friends had been forced to do to her, against all reason,

(full of sin full of evil whorebodied catslut)

she needed to be held. She needed to be pet. She needed a warm body to curl against and feel safe with and make her feel clean and safe and ha--

Happy.

But she _was_ happy. She had been happy.

She had friends. She was powerful and important. She won mighty battles and lost quite a lot of them on average but fuck it she was still trying, wasn't she? And

\--she missed her.

She missed Adora.

Scheme after scheme she hardly got a glimpse at Adora before she became She-Ra. There were opportunities to trade barbs or infiltrate or disguise herself or... whatever... but so much of their time had been spent in battle or sabotage or chase. And she missed this. She missed it more than she had words.

She was lying against Adora. She was clean, the subconscious weight of the cursed filth lifted, and Adora was strong and warm and she was holding her. Arms around her waist, chin on her shoulder, head against her cheek, she was holding her.

Catra was purring. Bastet dammit.

"I love you, Adora," she said.

_Bastet dammit!_

"I love you, Catra," Adora said. "I miss you."

"I..." Catra said. "I don't know what I believe."

The Horde was order. The Horde was the sky at night; the Horde was the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Horde made Shadow Weaver.

(betrayed Hordak betrayed you Horde is blameless Horde is the Light)

Thinking like Shadow Weaver taught her that the Horde made being Shadow Weaver painless and efficient. It rewarded the things that Shadow Weaver did to the people in her power. It made her strong and it made her arrogant and it made for seventeen years living under perpetual threat of death and actual torture.

"I believe in you," Adora said.

"...I'll make it better," Catra said. "I said we'd be in charge one day. I will be. One day. And I'll make the Horde a safer place for people like us. There's room for everyone in the Kingdom of Horde Prime. There has to be."

Adora held her tight. "I'll be the first to negotiate peace if you make the Horde a better place."

"Is that a promise?"

"Yes."

Catra giggled. "You stupid idealistic moron. What if I promise peace, then... boom? Tanks on tanks on tanks?"

"You blabbermouth. You just told me your master plan. You do tanks on tanks, I do spike horse on spike horse. So many wings, so many _points_."

"Shit. Alright, plan B... the plan I'm not telling you so you can't stop it."

Adora kissed her cheek.

The floodgates burst and Catra kissed her, full on the lips; in moments their tongues entwined, Adora's soft and yielding, Catra's rough and strong. They could taste each other's heartbeats.

There was so much to say; and they said nothing. Not when there was now.

* * *

The evening in Plumeria was calm and quiet and uneventful besides the first thing that happened when Perfuma rolled the team in on a mighty vine chariot: no sooner than Perfuma had announced their return than a flaming boat crashed into a hut.

Several moments later an enormous orb of ice crashed into the ground; it melted in a few seconds and with a dismissive gesture and a groan so deep it ventured into the subsonic Mermista burst the icemelt into an invigorating mist, revealing herself, Frosta, and, naturally, Sea Hawk.

"Oh, hey guys!" Bow said, waving. "We got the thing settled, don't worry!"

"Sorry," Mermista said. "We had a bad day."

"Oh, boy, are bad days going around," Glimmer said. "What was your bad day?"

"It all began with a **STOLEN TREASURE MAP**!" Sea Hawk said, leaping onto a maypole and pointing at the sky. "No sooner than--"

Mermista slapped her hand over his mouth. "Wrap Trap. We had to fight Wrap Trap."

"Oh, him," Adora said, wincing. "I hate that guy."

"You're telling--" Catra said in the second before a ring of ice blades appeared in the air in orbit around her neck. "--me," she said.

"You know what they say about cats?" Frosta said, stepping forward.

"Wait!" Perfuma said, stringing the ice knives together with ivies and cracking them to shards. "We've extended an invitation! They're not here on Horde business!"

"What're they here for, then?" Mermista said.

"Cover Frosta's ears... and eyes," Adora said. "It's kind of messed up."

"I'm a mature woman, I can take it," Frosta said, crossing her arms.

"You're _fourteen_ ," Mermista said.

"Yeah, exactly."

Mermista turned her around and covered her ears. Adora explained it in around a minute.

"Holy shit," Mermista said.

Sea Hawk opened his mouth, then closed it, then knelt and put his hand over his heart. "My heart aches in sympathy. I pledge to help you in any way you wish."

"You're a pirate, right?" Scorpia said, stepping out from behind Bow. (He was the widest.) "You got any rum?"

Sea Hawk produced a few handles of Chaos Camp brand high-proof rum. "Shall I mix you tropical cocktails?"

"Yes, thank you," Entrapta said, eyes welling with tears.

"Me too," Mermista said.

"Me too!" Frosta said.

Sea Hawk placed a Shirley Temple into her hand--though let it be known that in Etheria such a non-alcoholic cocktail is known as a Childacta.

Everything went well.

* * *

[Adora and Catra spent a long time together.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvPUTyqlCT4)

* * *

The two factions said their goodbyes in the morning. It was brief; the implicit treaty was near its end, after all.

Perfuma's last help for the Horde was lifting Shadow Weaver up from the Slime Pit; engulfed in sixteen hours' worth of slime, she was an unrecognizable lump wrapped in flowers. Entrapta cobbled together a Frankensteinian horror-bot to carry her into the hidden Horde transport, and they were off; before afternoon, they were in Horde territory again, and at noon, they entered the court of Hordak.

Entrapta's drone threw the Weaver-lump to the ground; she landed with a mighty splash. "And there's the little bastard right there," Entrapta said. "Kind of hard to tell who she is, but trust us."

Catra stepped away from the growing puddle. "So, yeah. She took your mercy and spat on it."

Hordak regarded Shadow Weaver. He held out his right hand; the mechanical musculature peeled apart and formed into a sonic cannon, metal tentacles spiraling into the form of a speaker. It made a terrible noise and the slime coating Weaver vibrated apart into a green mist.

Shadow Weaver's clothing was destroyed beyond repair. Her skin was tinted green; Catra hoped it would be so forever. Her face... had been done no favors. Her hair was perhaps beyond saving.

"Shadow Weaver," he said.

She raised her head feebly.

"You were so full of potential once. So idealistic. So committed to the cause. And now personal glory and revenge on your superiors takes precedent over serving the Horde in your new capacity."

"I cannot serve you like this," Shadow Weaver rasped. "Not in this withered form. Not so far from..."

His arm reformed into a three-pronged device that glowed an ominous orange. The prongs flared and Shadow Weaver flew from the ground and into its energetic grip a few inches in front of the prongs.

"You are removed from the glory of the Horde not through deprivation of magic," Hordak said, "but through your own selfish actions. Force Captain, you and your friends may leave. You will be compensated for loss of time and funds..."

"Oh thank _Daoloth_ ," Entrapta blurted. "Those fossils cost me a fucking mint, let me tell you."

"On that note," Hordak said, "I'll confiscate the Slime Pit within the hour. Please enjoy the rest of the day off, pending emergency."

"Yes, sir," Catra said, saluting. "We'll leave her weapons with you, too."

"No," Hordak said. "Keep them. They're yours by right of battle."

Scorpia glimpsed at the Terror Claws and held them out to Catra. "I mean, I kinda took them off her to begin with? But whatever, I got claws."

"Me too," Catra said, taking the Terror Claws. "But to hell with it. They'll look good on my wall."

The three left.

Hordak held Shadow Weaver at arm's length.

"You had control of their minds with what feeble sorceries Entrapta granted you?" he said.

Shadow Weaver nodded feebly.

"Imp," Hordak said. The creepy infant crawled from behind his throne. "Play audio log 2-88-73."

Imp opened his mouth. The audio quality was un-ideal, but Shadow Weaver recognized one of the voices.

"What is this?" the recording of Hordak said.

"You underestimated me _yet again_ , O master mine," the recording of his old apprentice said. "My mutants aren't so easily _dispensed with_ now, are they?"

"You've coated them in poison."

"'Type-1 slime medium,' is it not? With the proper _treatment_ , it makes a spectacular _ablative armor_ \--not to mention a _debilitating_ weapon. As your Horde troopers have found the _hard_ way! _Nyeheheheheh!!_ "

"Enough," Hordak said. "Entrapta invented the Slime Pit?"

Shadow Weaver whimpered.

"That would be a yes," Hordak said. "I'll have to keep an eye on her. She is yet more brilliant than she knows... more than even I could have estimated. And her latest weapon... it has potential. I can't wait to see what a better mind than yours can do with it."

His arm returned to being an arm; she landed on her feet, and he caught her, and he positioned her neck just so--

And he bit deep, his fangs piercing her vein, and he drank.

When he had enough, he lifted his head; he cast a weak healing spell to close the wound and let Shadow Weaver collapse on the ground, weakened twice over. He wiped blood from his chin and held his hand out; Imp licked Weaver's blood from his palm and fingers, making pleased little sounds as he did.

Hordak smiled little, but when he did, he meant it. Entrapta made him smile; her Slime Pit made him smile a little bit more.

* * *

"I'll see you later, alright?" Catra said.

In the intervening time since the Crystal Falls, she had talked to her friends, met their gaze, and ridden with them back home. But now in the shade of the Fright Zone she found it hard to meet their gaze once more.

"Yeah," Scorpia said. "I've got places to lay my head. We'll be fine."

"You'll... you'll wanna see us again, right?" Entrapta said. "I mean--oh, dammit..." She went from blissful to sobbing. "It happened again! Dammit, it happened again!"

Catra looked away while Scorpia went in for an Entrapta hug.

"I just... I just wanted to... I just wanted to be a little more normal!" Entrapta said. "It's hard to... I don't know what I should say half the time so I just blurt stuff out and, and, I know it's hard for all of you, and Shadow Weaver said she was gonna make me better at talking and..." She wept into Scorpia's chest. "I just wanted to play poker with you guys! That's how... that's how it all started..."

Smaller arms crossed her back and held her tight, even around Scorpia.

"Entrapta, Shadow Weaver is famously a huge bitch," Catra said. "She broke all our hearts. Yours especially. But look where it got her--under Hordak's foot. I... I love you, Easy E. You're fun and great. And bitches like Shadow Weaver shouldn't... shouldn't make you what you aren't."

" _Shit,_ that's a great nickname," Scorpia whispered.

It took a lot of work, but Entrapta twisted her mouth into a smile. "Thanks," Entrapta said.

"Next week," Catra said, "how about we try poker again? I'll teach you how to bluff like a champ. And how to spot a bluff, too."

"Yeah. Yeah," Entrapta said. "See you, Catra."

"See you," Catra said, and she waved her friends off, and the faint relief she felt when they turned the corner and fell out of sight was not quite eclipsed by missing them already--but it was damn close.

She would heal.

Yeah. She'd heal.

* * *

The room was terribly lonely. So, as the day wore on and it got intolerably boring, she put on some loud music and called up some target drones and went to town with the Terror Claws. They adjusted their fit to latch onto her forearms and slide onto her fingers; Easy E never did anything by half.

She cackled as she sliced things into chunks with casual waves of her hand. They were heavy, but she could train to get used to them. She pounced on flying target drones; she pared sparring dummies to ribbons.

She slashed demonstratively at a drone halfway across the room and a streak of shadow lashed from her claws and struck the drone in the chest, drawing deep scores across its chest.

There was a very pleasant sensation of connecting intent to arm.

She looked at the Terror Claws. Black magic faintly crackled along the blades.

"This..." she said, "has potential."

* * *

Adora lay her head on her flat, stiff bed, listened to her bedroom's waterfall gurgle away, and thought of the Crystal Falls, and last night's sleep, which was the most peaceful she'd had in a long time.

Her eyes closed, her thoughts drifted away, and her nightmares were thick with  [foul sorcery and death.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsGmT7I4c5I)

* * *

_The sun is a star in someone else's sky._

_\--Illum Tangendo_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ends what started as an exercise in writing pretty ladies getting covered in slime and turned into an exercise in making people feel really bad about pretty ladies getting covered in slime. (There may or may not be a sequel. My writing dance card is reeeeeal full up for a while...)
> 
> The Slime Pit is a classic Masters of the Universe toy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHncoxvxRO8 It was one of two I remember having in my childhood, and it had a lasting effect on me. *Ahem.*
> 
> This little bastard's plot is a very, very loose amalgamation of "Escape from the Slime Pit!", the mini-comic that came with the Slime Pit; "Prisoner in the Slime Pit!", the kid's book version; "The Garden of Evil!", issue 3 of the Masters of the Universe comic book from Marvel; and just a little bit of "The Sorceress and the Slime Pit" by the Slime Wizard, the other erotic Slime Pit fanfic that exists (and predates mine by nearly two decades, and has a lot more explicit rape if you're into that). Further, I referenced bits of the episode of the classic She-Ra episode "Loo-Kee's Sweetie," which if I had seen as a kid woulda made me pretty mad. ... It still kinda makes me mad.
> 
> A grand total of five Slime Pit toys are referenced: the Jurassic World Lava Surge playset, the original Slime Pit, the Harry Potter Slime Chamber, the Alien Queen Hive playset (when I first saw the commercial on TV as a child, I thought I was seeing a tree with a big glob of slime in its branches--this was before I realized I needed glasses) and the Mutant Slime Pit, twice over. (I would've fit in a reference to the Ra's al Ghoul Ooze Pit if I felt like extending the epilogue even further.) I highly recommend Pixel Dan's videos on the above for how they work (pretty damn well, except the Mutant Slime Pit, which is a little too high concept for its own good).
> 
> I have quoted repeatedly from the above works mentioned and probably would go back and add more if I could make it sound slightly organic. (Well, more organic than that title drop, amirite?)
> 
> This fanfic has been weirdly personal for me, maybe because I've had a lifelong feti--I mean obsess--I mean a lifelong, humiliatingly massive fetish for the subject matter (the sliming, not the mind control; what really gives me the Weird Tingles is the Star Comics and German comic book versions, where the threat of the Slime Pit is that the victim is covered in slime and that's disproportionately horrifying), and finally, finally have an excuse to write about it in a hopefully dramatic fashion. It would qualify as a novella-length exercise in fetish, except if that really was the case I'd have found an excuse to put Castaspella and Angella into the Slime Pit, because they hot. Super hot. But I did also just slather a bunch of hot college-age ladies in enormous amounts of slime, so... w/e.
> 
> If any of you wanna take this premise and run with it in your own direction... hell, I didn't come up with it. Go wild.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
